Tame

 

Tame

 

What you tame, makes you liable forever -

you read that somewhere

and it stuck, beat hard, hit home.

 

Devouring one sizeable rum and coke

prior to bed recalled

a sizeable slab of marble cake

Grandma once helped you to

that mother had baked –

her chill admonishment was the result:

iced eyes, glacial sneer, arctic tongue.

A shivering spine - and time

still has not shifted or eroded

your stubborn bedrock.

 

You were gifted a dream,

my Little Prince, not Baobab, not flower,

but of looking after a monkey.

 

You thought, at first, to eat her,

purchased for your larder,

freeze the choice cuts for later -

but your heart melts when you meet her,

she’s kind, a student to teach,

holds out arms that reach,

something in the eyes that beseech.

 

So you husband her instead,

quarter her in your keep

strew bales of straw for her feet,

only later to be filled with dread,

a jerking hangxiety, while you sleep,

thinking of the chaos

your untamed beast might wreak,

picturing it from an unsafe distance

and hoping she’s subjugate.

 

Grandson tangled in shag pile,

draws knees to chin

as robotic spiders sweep,

forage for predatory dust mites, eat

butcher’s select, plump fleas,

that have supped there, bitten deep,

entangled in some downy hair

that grows above the shin.

 

And later you pluck one with care,

encasing parasite in sellotape

watch it contract, explode

to foam a crimson bloodied rose.

 

That morning, when you awoke

it was as though you’d seen it all

through a foggy lens -

she who cannot walk, stumbles, falls

takes in payment what you resent

until you rescind what you had lent.

 

And as you kiss that other’s lips,

seize hair and breasts and grip,

a static spark between you slips,

earths in lightning through the floor

shocks both of you to the bloody core –

but even so, you shall remain

guardians of all those beasts you tamed.