"Shadowfag"
I am part fish, I'm told;
I'm also a wolf.
I will hound you down and disappear
Inside a cold wave, and laugh as I float
Effortlessly away,
Teeth barred towards no one.
I am sinewy and lean
And clean despite the forest I have grown here.
I am a young bear
A cub with stiff, bristly hairs standing up
On the back of my neck and chest and spine.
I feel just fine in the water,
At once both the fish stuck on
The grizzly's fang and the paw
Of the monster that brings that moment to pass.
You can hear me howl,
If the moon strikes me in such a way,
Opening my throat to such guttural moaning and releasing
The thousand animal things my bones long to say.
I abhor the sun—
|My countless run-ins with it leave me
Dry, and tired and over-exposed.
I pose only at night
The overhanging evergreen
Filtering out my impurities and leaving
Only muscle and fur and fin--
My eyes and my skin—
My mind, its sharp-as-flint darkness.
I am beautiful within my self.
The stars, too, are my friends—
They act as maps and align themselves
To help me trap and catch my prey—
Helpless as he may naturally be.
If you hear me rustle past your might:
Run; or,
Stand transfixed by my yellow eyes, mistakenly thinking
"If I don't move he will lose sight
And cruse to more social men."
Your naivety is endearing.
The night is the largest part
Of our tiny existences, and fills too many
With a conditioned sense of fright.
The night is not our enemy.
Live for a week at the bottom of the river
And you will see this; what little impact the passing of hours
Has on one's primal urges
To eat, fuck,
Sleep, mate—
Humans are just pretentious mammals
With the unfortunate ability
To over-analyze and relate past experiences
With present dramas, and sit two-by-two
In bars and over-priced coffee shops, and talk
And talk and talk and talk
Till words are as cheap as the seductive glances
Stolen between them,
As aimless as each step
In the walk back to one-or-another bare flats.
I loathe and growl
At the easy entrances into lonely men's mouths and asses I have had
In recent pasts.
Give me chase!
Let me run—make me catch
Your scent and sprint after you!
Through untouched wood and bold, frightening pools
That could very well be bottomless.
Make me sweat and swell with lust
Then smell my natural musk and stand
In the moonlight, in the river,
Naked and ambitious.
The taste of man is delicious.
A fire burns in the distance—
The zenith of human achievement,
The place where our race should have stopped.
And left our resilient Mother alone.
Our eyes have grown too big.
I am fish and crow and elk
And a thousand other noble beasts
That inhabit this world without leaving a wake,
That share their wealth and die when they should,
That live under the moon,
Ask no one for help.
I am man
My blood like sex and skin a thin restraint
With no complaint against the earth,
My arm around some solid male slumbering in the cool dirt,
Our lips nearly touching
As we exchange ideas through our hips.
I love him through instinct
In this moment of rest,
Pressed close and gaining momentum
Muscles tensing, flexing,
On the brink of exploding into a savage run
Together, then alone,
Under the bright pale captor of the sun,
Through thickets and brush
As man
As wolf
With claws and fangs and fur and fin and beak
And brain enclosing all these beasts.