"Freiheit: Escaping the Shadow's Feast" (September 2012)
Images, instincts, desires, drives, and sensations; not words.Verbosiveness cannot capture the essence of it;The ferality, animality, and chained creature beneath flesh, blood, and bone.Muscles tensing in periodic wavesClenching and flexing digits tipped in claws,As they seek solid and flesh to dig and tear into.Serpentine ivory fangs lowered to bare their intent,Glazed with saliva rolling down their gentle curves and points.Eyes wide and flared with inhuman color,Pupils large, sharp, and focused,
Nostrils broaden, flaring in and out with agitated, cyclic breaths.No one and nothing is permitted as preyAnd sustenance remains deprived progressively.Attack is not driven for the sake of bloodBut for the sake of function, vitality, life, and sustenance.Blood is not the goal—not the real essence sought.Rather, it is passion, fire, warmth, devotion, and vivaciousness.Restriction, restraint, and suppression cannot take away the drive: the need.They serve to stave it off, to keep it continually at bayAnd falsely under total control while shrouded in denial.Outside prey remains unattainable,Thus the creature turns on itself as it finds prey within;Self, Soul, and Subconscious become the new targets for attack.Claws strike out viciously in repeated tears across skin,Into muscle, into face, and across distressed, unknowing eyes.Punctures come to adorn the body from dagger teeth and claws;Pink and red—bright and dark—pattern the torn body;Tears, holes—chasms and caves—carved into the flesh,As scarlet rivers and lakes fill and spill out from within them.Fingers desperately dig and rip at an exposed neck
In a ravenous, self-destructive fury to free the creature
Even at the cost of its own breath, its own life.Eventually the animal backs down and ceases its attack.Wounds heal quickly and blood is regenerated,At the least on the surface and simply for now,Until the cycle falls into repetition at a later time.Breath is recovered, eyes are renewed their sight,Mind is calmed and body releases tension,Fangs retract, claws become blunt nails, and irises return to human brown.The chains still remain, though,Bound to the creature’s instincts, mind, and soul,As it begins its search ever-againTo find its outside source of vital life-force;To find its passion and fireFor breathing, existing, thriving, and feeling Life.For now it shall remain a victim to its own Shadows.Driven to feed their toxic influence furtherEach time the creature turns on itself,Until it finds a way to shatter the restraints,The poisonous shackles of hardened tar,And it reaches the sanctity of SunlightTo let the energy and warmthFlow freely through vessels, heart, body, and mind.The Shadows must not be permittedTo twist the creature into a Monster,For she is, and has remained, not simply just humanBut both animal AND human;Intrinsically composed as suchThroughout her Soul.