Labyrinth

My Minotaur, how many torches

Do you spend to pass the night,

To find your own hands?

& How many days

Do you burn to ponder

How many lives are sinned

Once they were born?

& Birth is forever past tense.

Gifted by the historical curse,

Family crime, how do you sleep

Without being haunted

By your mother’s ill-fated tears?

How do you come to understand

Human and loneliness,

How do you inherit fear?

Maybe you will hope to have a friend

Named Daedalus, whose son flied

& Died. But you hear stories no more,

Witness wings no more,

Just there in the vast cage,

Accommodated by savagery demanded.

In dreams sometimes you wonder

Who planted those white bones

Under your feet.

When it rains you hear water

Flowing sluggishly in the walls:

Like slimy skin of snakes kissing the interior

Of your dwelling, or worms

With no teeth, yet venomous by gaze.

You should be terrified of some creatures

When you imagine the sound to be someone

Wading in deep water in this castle

Trudging with their hearts

Not towards you. (Then to whom?)

Dwelling like spider cob, a thousand road

To escape, to die, to become hero.

Only one tunnel for waiting.

& You have no choice,

For the most beautiful Ariadne

Weaved this maze

Out of her blessed ball of wool.

2022.4.14