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Familiars
Shed your skin. Allow the talons there
within your fingertips to pierce the air,
to slash at it and make the heavens bleed.
Fix the horizon with a felid stare,
your new-grown pupils black, as thin as reeds.
Your new-furred, padded hands to grasp with. Knead
the earth before you, kitten at her teat.
She will awaken. She will let the sweet
and slaking flesh come to you. Rock your sleek
and supple shoulders in position, seek
the perfect leaping moment and then: fly.
This human world no longer rules you. Shriek
your passion-ravaged hunger. Bid goodbye
their cages. Cast your newly-feral eye
upon the red-faced land, your muzzle red,
your talons dripping sanguinary threads
to mark your liquid track. She who became
your ebon sinewed fur, her words now said
in howling, she who shed her human frame
once summoned beasts like me to her to tame.
I bear sweet marks of her captivity
beneath this fur, beneath my skin, a free
familiar bound, my heart engraved in script
I know but cannot read. Once we have slipped
their fences, left our shed skins on the wire,
regrown our languorous tails, fully transshipped,
our eyes shall radiate as if on fire:
the ember-lit tapetum of desire.
Posted by: Chris Clarke
Note: A database glitch in 2008 ate a bunch of archived comments. Don't be offended if yours isn't here, or confused if the conversation seems disjointed. Thanks!
This poem resonates with the cat person in me.
Now I just need to be more settled so that I can actually share my house with a cat or two.
By: By Darkling on 2008 03 27
Categories:
Poetry
