Hercules, my beautiful baby boy
With your corn silk hair of Samson
And small spaces between your teeth
The laughter that burbles forth
Clear and pure as water,
How much you have grown from
child to Man.

A fragile shoot into an oak tree.

You avoided Death’s jaws
By closing your tiny fists around them
Insanity bestowed as a gift for fighting
The animal within purging the blood.

And yet my poor child sent so many trials.
Your hair shorn
Looking like a prickly porcupine
But it was never about those locks
It was your heart.

A heavy burden to bear
And some are not equal to the task
They trip and drop them
Watch as the glass shatters

But you are half human
Yours does not break
The muscle rips and tears
Agonizing though it may be
It mends stronger each time.

Your cup overflows
And it feels like drowning
The highs that are tsunami waves
Lows become earthquakes
Shaking everything apart.

And this mother may only be mortal
But she reminds you that
Your hair will grow back
And so will your heart
Lovely as before.

"Mama loves you."
Mama coos as she sews her daughter's lips shut.
The little girl nods and lies still in her bed,
"Daddy loves you."
Daddy murmurs as he cuts out his daughter's heart.
The little girl nods and presses her favorite blanket close,
"Sister loves you."
Sister states as she cuts off her sister's legs.
The little girl nods and sleeps away.

But the morning brings to light all that's happened
What she has sacrificed to make others happy
And the little girl cannot ignore it.
But, she reasons, it is better to be kind
Then to be greedy.
So she passes the effect of blood loss off as exhaustion
The feeling of emptiness as over-active hormones
And again closes her eyes
To wait for a sense of contentment,

She was still waiting when a voice caught her attention.
She resisted opening her eyes
Instead only listening to the words he spoke,
And though the events he told about drew questions to her lips
The little girl could not say a word.

He seemed to understand this,
For he faithfully visited the torn little girl everyday
Feeding her all that he knew
And seeking out what he could not answer
When her small fingers wrote out her questions
Of stereotypes, of stars upon flags
Promising to bring back what he had found.

Back and forth the two went.
She writing her questions
And he answering all that he could,
His constant presence eventually encouraging her
To open her eyes.

The little girl was shocked at what she saw.
He had chocolate brown eyes
A faint scattering of freckles upon cream skin
But even more so
No blood stained his cloud white shirt
He had his legs.

Prompted she looked at herself
And if she could have gasped she would have,
No more was she a little girl
But a teenager.

This realization and with it the true weight
Of what she had passively allowed
Boiled inside of her.
To regain what she had foolishly given away.

The teenage girl found the strength to sit up
Childhood blanket hiding her chest wound from the man
Whose presence she had become enamored with.
She took back her legs
And followed happily after the man
Who did not mind the duckling that had become his shadow.

Spurred by this and anger
She tore the thread from her lips
Eyes stinging with pain and victory.
She fought bravely for her heart
Carrying half as a partial victory
Glad to have that much.

It was the beginning of the contentment
That the once torn little girl
Had always wished for.

The hunger is voracious
Ebbs and flows with the tides
Sweet words fight in her throat
She feels them on her tongue
swallows them as if they’re food,
But still she starves on empty air.

She longs to sink her fingers into his hair
Pull back on that corn silk wealth
Such a pretty line of his throat
She bites and swallows the Adam’s apple
Finds the wet heat of him comforting
Buries her face into the ragged wound.

She wants to consume every piece of him
Wants to tear him apart and find something secret
Something that fills her full to the brim.
But can bring herself to do nothing more than destroy,
Ruin what she cannot have
Replace the lust for body with blood.

The boy reduced to creature
And again, to pretty thing
Less human and more plaything.

He lets her arrange him the way she likes
Watches with pitying eyes and gaping throat.
She strips him of any fat
Uses the paring knife on his thighs
Shaves him close,
Finds him delicious and raw.

Her little teeth clamping down on his jaw
Sinking and bursting through the skin
She likes bruising him, claiming with impermanent means.

What a selfish child, she thought
Leeching the poor tree dry
Less than what she had been before.

She herself stripped of her jewels
Made into extreme miniatures for her children’s fingers and ears
The mossy fur ripped from her flesh
Her screams the crunch and creak as they felled her trees.

They give her no pause between the spasms of pain
An endless labor with no birth to show
No relief and her sweat has filled oceans.

The fires licking over her parched skin are a joyous pain
She writhes, reveling in the heat.
And now it is her children who scream and sob
Begging the man who cradles them in his palm to restrain her.

But he won’t
For they are hers while mortal
And he will not touch them
Until their ghosts have shrugged from their shells.

Once the sight of their broken bodies
would have caused her tears to pour forth
Drowning their tiny lungs and swelling the number held by him.
But now she is a mother who turns her face from her squalling infants
Cries falling onto calloused ears.

She learned from the many named man
How to be at peace with their deaths
And found from him comfort
With his mouth sewn shut, his eyes only for those he holds
His ears filled with the empty silence of their space.
And even though this last sanctuary has become contaminated
Still she stirs the soup of air rocketing her little ones around her.

Her ignorant children cause her agony
But what young do not?

Some even pray to her
Working to feed off her in other ways
And though they are only a drop in the bucket of her pain
She cannot deny she loves them.

So long has she watched them live and die
Broke down their empty  bodies and
seen them rejoin their creator to weep
when faced with what they have done to her their mother.

A pity the dead cannot speak to the living.
But she quiets them
Shows her disembodied children
The wonders she still holds
Smothered, smudged and distorted.

Again they sob thinking she means punishment
In showing them her diminished beauty but it is not so.
She beckons them to look and understand
No matter the cancer growth of their chemicals
that poison her body
There is no permanent death for she will consume any and all
Even her own brood to continue on.

Her children may strip her of everything
As willingly as Shel’s tree gave herself away
But it is she who will remain long after their bodies
Have grown frail and decayed
For she is Mother Earth.

She persuades him to lie down and be still for her
Naked in body only,
her eyes peer past the whole to the pieces.

She squeezes his *******
Sweet, ripe little things
How they ache for her.

Curious hands become gentle fingers
Sliding up his throat
knuckles rasping against stubble
Skating across his forehead smoothing furrows.
Press gently on the delicate skin at the edges of his eyes
Follow down between the eyebrows
The straight line of his nose
Stroking soft lips that part in hungry expectancy.

She stretches his arms above his head, palms up.
Traces with spider legs down his shivering skin
Tickles the hair of his armpits
Nuzzling her nose into the masculine scent
Laps and finds bitterness on the tongue.

He squirms at the wet touch skin twitching,
But she soothes him with fingers in his hair
Rests her cheek against his own to quiet him.

Nudges him over and up go his arms,
A supplicant with his large hands and long fingers, palms down
Works her thumbs into the thread of muscles in his shoulders,
Down that wall of muscle and skin
To knead that sculpted fat more than generous.

Marvels over his feet
Admires the elegance
Tickles the arches
Cherishes his toes like an infant’s.

She is a good butcher

The knife steady in her hand,

Although she’s never quite gotten the knack

For hacking in one swing.

Tried once and hit bone – elicited screams.


Prefers instead to slice carefully

Weighs each cut of the knife

Watches the blood well up

Saliva pooling in response.


His pretty little ears she nibbles on

Followed by his lips she samples at every moment

Even his nose she presses kisses to.


There’s so little fat to him

Just how she likes.

When she gets too hungry to wait

Sinks her teeth into the definition of his pectoral

Rips away the muscle chewing gleefully.


He is a rich source of protein

Her body has been craving.

Finds what is so often boasted between the legs of men

no delicacy at all as some treat it.


Loves to lap at his iliac crests

Wear down to his bones and crack them between her teeth

**** the slick, nutritious marrow.


Finds a certain contentment

In the consuming focus

The preoccupation of her hands, mind, and mouth.

This raw hunger
Only a product of youth?
Or from a deeper need.

A bone deep craving
A lack of protein.
Skin calling out in desperation
From the acrid thirst.

My hands want to hold and pull close
These teeth long to chew and swallow.