second go at the poem - edit 30/11/2017

there are some places from which there is no coming back

I stood, hose in hand,

water pushing out the bronze nozzle,

catches the sunlight, sparkles,

a tail of hope; leaves that should

have been green and gently serrated,

instead bronzed and curled.

Crowning each branch, petals

that had never opened, defeated;

limp and browned, like hats

fallen over faces that frowned, forever

swallowing what colour

might have been presented.

Everything clutched inwards,

shrunken by the search for shadows

where none existed; on the burnt ground,

around its defeated trunk, leaves shed

before their time; each a story to tell,

each the same tale, defeat ruins everyone.

I wanted to save it:

Leaves that should have been

green and gently serrated, instead

bronzed and curled.

Crowning each branch,

petals that had never opened, defeated;

limp and brown, like hats

fallen over faces that frowned.

Darkness forever swallowing what colour

might have been presented.

It had shrunk in

on itself, as if it searched

for shadows within.

On the burnt ground

around its defeated trunk,

leaves shed before their time;

each a story to tell,

each the same tale,

defeat ruins everyone.

I stood, hose in hand,

water pushing out in a tail

of hope;

too late,

there are some places

from which there is no coming back.

The Minotaur dreams:

The Minotaur saw his many-mirrored reflection

in the sweat-beads gathered on the foreheads

of girls who fed him; cried out to his Father  

not knowing if it was to the King Minos

or the god-bull his pleas flew towards.

Each morning the guards reported to Minos

his nightly pleas and the witnessed torment

as they girls drew close and fed him.

They noted his horns bent towards the girls

as if their tips hungered for the touch of flesh.

Each girl attained the moment when she could resist

no longer; liquefied fear, like lava, carried her

onto his horns; the still breathing, bloody body

then dragged to the King’s bed, mute and vacant,

ruined for a second time, sent home in a casket.

The monster was blamed for each maiden’s death,

so the Minotaur’s legend grew, the monster oblivious

of his crimes, unaware his name filled the ears of children;

he remained deep underground, dreamed of light, of air
and the feel of a grass stem chewed between his lips.

The minotaur dreams in the darkness beneath:

Head cradled between hands as human as his mother’s

the minotaur finds sleep,

dreams his legs are normal

carry him across sunlit fields, flowers, bees and laughter…

as if his birth a dream

and the dream real…

he has not been imprisoned beneath the earth

but is free to roam above

he even thinks his lips can recall

the feel of his mother’s nipple

the touch of his father’s hand

upon his unkempt hair…

in darkness

asleep

the minotaur whines and twitches

like a dog asleep at the hearth
who chases prey never caught.

A lamentation for Minos:

Alone, Minos stands in the room above where Asterion roams,

the beast’s heavy tread below constantly heard, each step

a haunt for the King, a reminder that the monster’s blood

is not His own but the bull-god’s lie. Surrounded by tapestries

that depict Cretan victories and billow in the Island’s gentle breeze,

The King’s stares out across His land, takes in the bright sun

above that hurts the eyes, the blue skies, the lines of bronze crops

that stand straight as attentive soldiers, Crete’s sea, filled with ships 
laden, empty or between the two, testimonies to legitimacy of The King.

Chosen before their youth has fallen from them, like browned petals

off the rose, Bull-dancers are dispatched to the monster to assuage

a King’s guilt, fault does not lie with the shocking child; Minos,

despite the rage that ruins his love, knows the mistletoe strangles
the tree so it can reach the light; there is no fault, only the act.

a castle pastoral:

Was it rape —

the bull attacked Pasiphae as she passed?

Was it desire —

The god present in the bull’s breath?

Minos precipitated the act —

the white bull present in the bull ring.

That morning Pasiphae walked,

orange sunrise a glow at the world’s edge,

the first tamed animal snorts and movement,

in the distance the first sails

as fishermen left Crete’s shores —

Pasiphae’s bare feet cracked frost that early morning.

The bull-god in the forest waited, his breath

driven out of his overly large flared nostrils

like mist between sentinel trees; stirred The Queen —

liquid tease.

Minos gained the beast to crease

Athenian brow with rumours

of the unsolvable labyrinth —

the monster at its heart

who ate their young dancers.

As proof of lineage

Asterion’s feet and head were uncovered,

Pasiphae still white

and exhausted, ignored by her husband —

his eyes on the beast, proof

of the secret rendezvous.

The two in the birthing room —

silence and blood;

heavy breathing of the exhausted mother,

the bull-child removed,

the god absent —

what words can bridge

the distance between what you had
and what it now has become?