Hotspur on High

Image borrowed from Bokemeyer Art.

Hotspur on High

As a child, while visiting the farm
of my second stepfather’s parents
in Illinois, I was attacked by a ferocious
rooster in the barn yard, all spurs,
slashing furrows in my boy’s back;
ever since that encounter
I have had the Rooster dream.

I awaken suddenly high above my
slumbering harem, hearing the stirrings
of a red fox, or a weasel, or a coyote,
or a rogue killer dog, pawing at the loose
board in the wall. I find those murderous
red eyes suspended in darkness,
and I smell the fetid breath.

I always raise the alarm, waking the women
as I fly down toward those eyes,
all spikes and fanned-out hackles,
shouting angrily, bellicose and chanticleer:

“I am cock-comet, white-hot son
of Caesar’s god Lugus.
I am Hotspur and I will stab you
in those damned eyes!
There is no gentle capon standing guard
this night--there is a proud game cock,
bred for fighting and confrontation;
I will crow until your ears bleed,
cut off your balls and peck out
burning ember orbs, and eat them
while you witness blindly!
You will find no sustenance, no succor,
no victims here among my ladies.
Be gone!”

The intruder flees
and I awaken a second time,
in my own body, in my own bed, forever wondering
why I have blood in my mouth,
and my hands are cramped into claws.

Glenn Buttkus November 2010

Listed as #54 over on Magpie Tales 39

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