His ribs were made of
precious rocks
Where dust was breathed into--
Sealed in seams and living
locks
Until this boy was born and grew;
Mocked that tree that built
his box
And held his soul---the one he split in two.
I. Numbed-Out Funeral Song
In my enameled haste, I bit away the husks and soft seams of my
fingertip only to spackle my spirit in three cardinal-hat drops. While they
fuse into the cotton mesh of a white buttoned shirt, a neon display lights the
window of the Majestic Mortuary, singing
and jiving to tip-toeing black umbrellas caught in the daylight. Hiding my red
triad beneath the crisp diamond pattern of a silk tie, the trickles converge
into the slick-black sequence of a forking geometry. I’m the only one who
knows; I mourn for myself, I mourn for humanity in silent, silver-tongued
requiems. No one else seems to notice---that it’s all going to break when they
blanch and bleach in the swirling of a washing machine: red-erased, to become
crisp as the calllus from which they entered the world, Souls, underground:
we’ll pierce into the dirt and cycle through a precious twist of earth.
II. Transcendentalism
One wild, three-toed dove flaps its collection of pastel-brown
feathers, sewn together into some dull, begging plumage. On the Ninth Street
concrete, a pearly shine from the fowl’s bust blinds walkers and lookers that
sneak a peek at the cyclic pomp. The tear in its chest has a pus-dried rust
surrounding its lead-peg-heart---a nameless shape in its ruffle of frayed
horns; each projects like a thousand silhouettes from a single spark. When the
street darkens with the nightly cast of shadows, the dove---vertebrae
aligning---swoons into some glint in the amethyst puffs above, mourning. The
world is quiet but for the whistle of gilt luxury automobiles; the violenting
clouds of sky rage with the wind---breathing like some shatterer of worlds,
fearing the grounds that bury below.
III. Afterglow of a
Sickle-Moon
We both heard the electric buoy of insects: black bees and beds
of roaches, hissing at our feet as we paced by. The spider-shaped contour of
exploding palms hid our path through the soot-colored dark. Scratched and
seared by brambles of a city jungle, our chafing legs were pulled and forced by
the nerving grasp of wild twilight. Like a wasted, old Man and Woman, we both
stood hunched; two broken columns, two Kahlos in the pithed fluidity of our
fear: “I hope the exit is joyful---and I hope to never come back.” Hundreds of
termites, like wasps, smothered our skin beneath the enlarging glare of a
streetlight, wings sticking to our faces as we hear their bursting murmurs
beneath the leather souls of our shoes. The sky holds only a sickle-moon, held
by invisible strings that cup our fate.
All that is left are his
precious rocks,
Turned to dust that which was breathed into---
Picked and pulled at those
weathered locks
Until ash became the boy who grew;
Now under, he lays six in
his simple box
With his soul---the one split in two.
*The inner core of certain organs or body structures, such as the
marrow of bones.
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