The Clemency of Beasts (Poem)

We are all murderers.

A slick of blood, like lover's spit spilling from behind teeth buried in our own flesh; the scarlet kiss of self killers, leaving deadly lacerations across our skins.

The bowers of murder, scenes of slaughter, where we have put down our own dogs because the hounds that howl are calling for the death of the vulnerable, the injured, the weakest parts of us. Because we fear pouring our savage hearts like the mightiest of rivers, remembering only the mountains that gifted us our shame.

And so, we call for the slaughter of the omega to feed the mightier bones. For all have butchered these lesser portions of ourselves and served them up, a feast of pieces, the viscera of fear, torn apart, to feed the belly through the long, dark, winters.

And there is blood in matted fur, leaving the stain of paw prints along the forest floor, like a ribbon of vermillion lace that leads to the cave bed where the tails and teeth of greater beasts remember, by this life blood spilt, that something, very much like us, somewhere, in the deep snowdrift, had to die, so we, so we, could stay alive.

And this is the mercy, the clemency, of beasts. For if you are too frail for war, we will fashion from your bones, our blades.

bvk, 2019.