My head was animal. At least
that was the verdict. I had no choice.
The innerness of encirclement
my father devised. I was gotten, they tell,
by a bull. And my mother a queen!
Legend pierces entrancement.
I had no choice. My amazement was
complete. My diet was human condiment,
fixed by that king of men,
my father. What had I to do
with a hunger kept caught
among the inescapable corridors of skin?
Officially, I was the beast:
I was the guilt that shamed an empire
and robbed Athens of its youth.
I… The invention of a mystery.
So many answers to confound the blood,
to make of madness a sacrifice.
In the darkness of my being
led a man not man enough,
given heroic tyranny,
deduced by need, given the clue of exit
by a lost lady, that more my human half,
my sister, fallacy, my hope.
I had no choice. My mother a queen.
My father the king of men. The hero,
my sister’s traitor, entered my halls,
cautious, a sword for a hand, a fear
that was my end and his fault,
and I raised my double head at him…
His treachery is dull.
His unravelling world I hardly follow
now. I savor the trench of the blade
through tissue against my skull’s bone.
The depth of that transfigurement was light.
I speak from a death that holds me still.
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