Leon Petty
Slavery
Swaddled in the night
in horror I whisper
“Help me to be free”
not knowing from whence
or of what I ask
Never black and white
in the 9th century
this word breached
when Muslim Moors
enslaved the European Slavs
and language
in contrition and conceit
cumulated to constitute
a shoal, a ruck, a retinue of words
nuancing the pox of slavery
But why with such a permeating word
with aspects infinite
is it so hard to ken
slavery’s place and meaning
A religion, an institution, a philosophy, a lover
It takes an effort to accede
to every blemished box
in slavery’s creed
Slavery is after all
a splendored sort of freedom
where lives made pedestrian
toddle in the craggy nooks
festooned by mingled masters
In microcosm and macrocosm
gestated in the asylums of the world
insect and behemoth
compel their particular freedoms
Food, Love, Dominion
Slavery trades in these three things
Standing before their shadowy masters
each soul will bow and barter
In the Animal Kingdom the strong survive
but in man
the meaning of strength convolutes
The worst of man’s attributes
can be morphed into an obscene probity
So subtle is slavery
Salacious slavery
Baste my bloody bones
with your leathery paychecks
Tighten on me your capricious cock rings
that I might comprehend my planted feet
Let me wail
reaping your burgeoning tobacco
Let me plop my life
into your hunger and asinine desire
groveling into the moments
I could not create myself
I sing the body enslaved
Slavery of the ear and of the hand
Slavery of the vagina and the penis
Slavery of every unsung heart
Slavery from the mouth to the anus
Glopped in slavery
Slavery in the craw
Slavery entrenched in tradition
Slavery edified in
sprawling plantations of psychodrama
Slavery sanctioned by history
Slavery in the paradigms of wallpaper
Slavery in the arc of the moral universe