the bull dancers — edit 1

The minotaur and Minos, the king, the servant,

the beast, none moreso, none the least,

the father, the son, the ravager, the unspeakable trinity

we mention not, fearful the side they hide
be seen by innocent eyes —
how can a good man be bad (and if so the king, why not me) ?

What then of the bull dancers, the daughters —
caught within in the ritual known intimately,
hidden from humanity, especially from the mothers

(or do they know and remember their own time in the maze)?

Picture the labrynth nights, the darkness that encloses,

deep-sea tentacles attach and drag the dancers,
a tangle they cannot evade; sleep as a means to escape;
they hear all manner of things that move
inside the room, and out,
little noses that expand into terror, known bumps

and scratches at the window, that twist into noises
brimming with sinister intent and then finally, as the dancer

falls asleep, the bedroom door creeps open

and the parent in the daytime enters as the beast.

The minotaurs fate remains with us,
we remember Theseus, the hero, we even recall Icarus

and Daedalus, those who constructed the maze,
but the bull dancers, those children who danced

across the horns, do we remember them at all —

and if we do recall those innocents
that fell or escaped, we do so
with little more than a moment or two,
too determined we are to remain in the sunlight
and not remember the maze in the night that devours

innocents when the beast calls listening fathers.