Brother Wolf, Sister Owl

Steve from Camden works on a market stall,
selling T-shirts with cheap and gaudy prints
of totemic beasts and noble native
Americans: bare chested, hatchet faced
men festooned with feathers, who pose beside
their brother wolves in crudely drawn cartoons
of a land both simplistic and racist,

though he sees himself as a right-on guy
when he gets pissed at the Comedy Store
and laughs in all the right places - teeth bared
in the dark, amidst punchline barks and howls,
the pack mentality that pounces if
a comic falters - while wilder brethren
stand grey and silent, caged in Regents Park.

His girlfriend Beth is Pre-Raphaelite punk,
with speed kohled eyes, semi precious nose stud
and hennaed pigtails; she sashays in black
chiffon and Doc Marten boots, but abhors
her boyish breasts and seaside postcard bum,
so nicks blunt Bic razors from Steve's bathroom
and cuts the hidden flesh of her inner

upper arms: releases blood imprisoned
by biology, breaking the red bars
that hold the feral scream within her veins,
which takes flight with spirit owls on the long
sleeved T she wears to bed - not fluffy cute,
but beaks and talons; spotlight eyes of death
fix small creatures skittering in darkness.

Beth wakes with the weight of feathers, the beat
of wings inside her chest, the taste of bones
balled on her tongue, while Steve's thigh muscles twitch
as he sleep chases through forests towards
a cooking fire - a microwave - a bare
electric bulb is not the moon - and whines
for scraps, licks grease from hands he dare not bite.