The Beast
I like black hair.
I mean oil slick Black,
closed coffin lid Black,
redwood forest at night Black.
Red is a close second.
It becomes her.
I like her freckles…
the same way I like half finished drawings,
fingernails on flesh intimacy, smoking in the rain
and irredeemable villains.
Sprinkled on hands, arms, face…
(I imagine other places too)
Little dried spots of blood
On flesh parchment
Curves. Just enough to draw my attention.
Is there a more feminine shape?
A more perfect design to make man into beast?
Her eyes are definitely not hazel.
A stained glass oak tree
Shattered!
Pieced together by a colorblind, cerebral palsy victim
with a love of German expressionism,
a kaleidoscope forest,
all quadratics and angles.
She’s pretty.
Not Beautiful. Not Gorgeous.
Just pretty.
Natural beauty is a crutch, it will fade.
A pretty woman’s beauty is earned,
carved deep into set minds and petrified hearts,
with heavy time and sharp sensibility.
Though it may fade
it is eternal.
She teases the carnivore in my eyes,
but it is her mind, making this strange hunger.
Forcing the unwanted love child of desire and fear into my care.
It is not the typical “in” fears men seem to have of women.
intelligence, independence, individuality.
It is the little monster whispering when she speaks,
licking my brain with her poetry,
kneading my heart through half formed facial expressions
and piercing me with consuming kaleidoscopes and sincere smiles.
It is a beast I know well for it dwells in me.
I pray I am wrong.
For if it resides in her
what a wretched thing she must be.
She and I play the same role,
speak the same lines,
perform the same actions.
Able to fool the world so well,
she cannot fool me and I cannot fool her.
Will I find, in her, my worst fear
or forgotten hope?
Either way… the beast wins.
-the raven king
