Perhaps it is the bull that gets the last laugh after all.

After a life being poked and prodded, after a finale
flayed and filleted, it is his leftover skin that turns us, his
tormentors, into the draft animals.

Perhaps it is with both disgust and amusement that
the bull sees the byproducts of his carcass used to
fashion these straps, these harnesses, these whips,
these gags, these paddles.

Perhaps his hard death has tempered his memories enough
for him to be amused by the boys with the leather collars
and cock rings, the boys trussed up with familiar shiny gear,
and suspended in their stalls by cowhide and steel.

Slaughterhouses and bathhouses are both kept dark
to keep the inmates calm, while they are poked and
prodded, while we enact these, the savage rituals
of our carnal desires.

In this crowded sex shop I touch the slings, the straps, the
restraints, all black and accentuated with chrome, and I
feel that hunger for flesh growing more insistent—
forbidden lusts from darkest corners of my desire.

I want to be disgusted, and I am.
I want to be appalled, and I am.

I want to be better than this and I am.

I want to see you suspended before me, chains tinkling,
leather gleaming with spilled lube and semen.

I know better than to ask the bull’s forgiveness.

(First published in Danse Macabre, 2017)