Who is Your Black Beast?

I stooped down to mine,

so close my fingers dripped slick 

with its warm breath-fog.

Knew it was being driven mad by hunger,

I finally stooped down and fed my fear;

Decades of white-hot hurt, 

the sort of jitterbug anxiety that could 

make skin crawl off the bone,

and futile thought process 

shoveled into the gaping mouth of the bete noire.

As you may have guessed, my fear remained famished.

(In tact in fact, multiplied or metastasized in groaning)

A gnawing aggressor,

I next tried to drown her out in honey.

The thick sweet chafed my throat raw.

Stomach ache with

All of that hot air bursting at my bowels.

(A poisonous blue in the belly of the wolf

I yelp louder

Sharp jags of howl cutting the listening moon.)

The glistening moon shone fierce in reply:

“Do not be afraid... I am with you.”

About: the futility of fear (like flatulence-- inconvenient but relatively harmless). God reminds me He’s got my back though

postscript: Isaiah 41:10