The Butcher

The Butcher, part one

I few east, a rest from the need
in my cut up heart
my own, blood was running out
too quick

In the night, I sat
behind a man I didn’t know,
as he took me through the
boulevards of an aged and changed city
a city dissected itself,
once upon an early September

We speed over cobbled stone streets
where blood used to run, thick and wet
out from under warehouse doors
into the crevices
staining the old mortar deep

The animal parts cut and packaged,
now set away, to hidden locations

A road reborn, into, a place for luxury goods
handbags and shoes made of those same parts,
animal hides, stripped and bleached
stapled and shaped, to the points
of high healed boots

This is how we related
I was too cut
packaged away
stripped of what was, I thought, truly mine
bleached my heart, the red run out
into a night, onto streets…

That I sometimes pass, in my dreams
and see that girl,
hallow,
looking out from behind
big butcher doors

The Butcher, part two

It was here my goddesses set me, back
to a street I knew before you,
the butcher,
got at my soft,
once truly yours, parts

I am a girl with little fear of the new
so I glossed and perfumed
slipped on a dress, flats jeweled at the toe
out just for a look, water, maybe a cup of white wine; alone

I walked up to the boys, white and dark
tall, and both pretty
in there own unique way;
the way I like beauty

We shared a smoke;
the tart, burning air inhaled into my lungs,
even thought I knew better for a sick girl

Are you the next one?
The new butcher to take a piece?
I am scared for a girl with no fear
I have seen/felt what the knife can do
to an exposed chest, heart, groin

And so I wonder…

Will I once again join that girl?
behind the window,
next to the slicing machine;
my blood running out, dark and syrupy
into the dirty ghost street