For the Now
/Craig McGeady
I am a new beast now.
Claws, teeth, the rotting stink of bygone meals;
they are gone.
I am a new beast now.
Like a dancer,
teetering on the edge of stillness,
a hair's breath from chaos,
I am a new beast now.
All puff and vigor, bluster and regret,
stuffed into overnight bags and sent on ahead,
only I've lost the ticket and am unable to follow,
not sure where I'm going but I am a new beast now.
In transit, shedding shell, exposing the tender parts
breaking free of the past where the wildness grew,
where desire was an untamed force,
where words were bedding for small rodents and fertile ground
for dreams and skewed perceptions
but when the rains fell and cleaned the slate,
tore open wounds and sluiced canals
the meat and bone let go,
stopped holding on to the reasons, the irritants,
and breathed.
Breathing life into an unmade form,
panting and allusive, striving and riddled,
aware of unawareness,
a beast not for potential
but for the now.
I am a new beast now.
Author’s Note: This poem is about transitioning from one state, from a place of comfort with familiar boundaries and a known self to a new sense of awareness, much as if i've slipped on a new skin and set out into the world, learning as much about myself as the space around me as i go. The animalistic self is a shock, it's meant to reflect the confidence and strength i now have to move forward, elements i wasn't aware i possessed until found myself in completely new surroundings and found that i could cope within them.
Craig McGeady is from Greymouth, New Zealand and lives with his wife and two daughters in Xuzhou, China. His writing runs the gamut of length and form thanks to a homeroom teacher with a penchant for Michael Moorcock. He has poems published or forthcoming in The Garfield Lake Review, The Wild Word, The Cicada's Cry, The Remembered Arts Journal, Underwood, Genre: Urban Arts and Snapdragon: A Journal of Art & Healing and is winner of the 2018 Given Words 'The Spanish Connection' Poetry Competition.
