ignoble beast

Gone Native

I left a life
I once fashioned
with my own two hands
from clay, blood and spit -
Spite, sweat, love, lust crushed,
beaten, bloodied and bull whipped
into a blind allegiance roundly blindsided,
battered and betrayed without benefit of a kiss -
And so I banished myself to the wilderness
where dreams lie awake at night
listening for the predator's
twig-snap pursuit -
Abandoned the safety of numbers
and wandered like a lone ignoble beast
the forgotten footpaths of a struggled ancestry
leading me back to a beginning unburdened by desire -
Exiled emotion to the outskirts
lying beyond this outlier's bleeding heart
barely left beating by the brush-thorn-thicket-torn
bushwhacking through love reclaimed by human nature -
A selfish act of self-preservation,
savage, sacred, profane and profoundly
liberating, the animal inside awake and alive,
survival ensured by civilized sensibilities long gone native