Minotaur #poetry #Earthweal

Blood-drinker
half-human
offspring of 
Earth-shaker:
Mask-wearer
flesh-tearer;
anamnesis of
the beast
in every one

Of us / Outsider
within us
down under
the surface:
reptilian, 
heartless
instinct of
bloodlust
run amok

through the labyrinth
dweller-dark 
lurker-marauder of 
murderous thought
and intent:
In deed
just a dancer
till Earthshaker
wakes her:

Ariadne, your sister 
who taught you
the dance will
betray you
her brother
for sake of
her lover
forsaking her bloodline and
family ties:

Yet with the 
Earthshaker we 
see you arise
pour scorn on
your people who
made you then
chained you
insane now
they turn the

blood-ritual
into blood-bath:
Desperate-cannibal
last resort-never well
Earth has her
lore which
we cannot
escape
nor ignore.

© Experimentsinfiction 2020, All Rights Reserved

Brendan has asked us to don a mask for Earthweal’s Weekly Challenge. The Minotaur myth never gets old: from Herodotos to Freud and beyond, historians, poets and psychoanalysts alike have probed the depths of this labyrinthine myth to find hidden meanings and some kind of reality behind the bloodthirsty story.

It is easy to imagine that the Minotaur myth was born out of a ritual in which a man wore the head of a bull. Just how bloodthirsty this ritual might have been or become, we may never know for sure. There is some evidence that the ‘Minoans‘ resorted to cannibalism in times of famine; possibly brought on by climatic changes, earthquake or tsunami from the Thera eruption. All of these theories are subject of labyrinthine scholarly debate. I am not seeking to wade into this debate here. Instead I am offering an experimental poem in which I imagine a people who try to control the raw power of the Earth only to be reminded inescapably that Earth’s is the ‘overseeing power/To kindle or restrain.’