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Shapeshifter
ringing bells speak to me
stories undo me
who could refrain from the temptation
to imitate birds and dogs
to home ourselves
in the bone
and see how many there were
on the other side
Poesie sull''argomento: bone
Poesie sull''argomento «bone» su Poets.by.
Radical
at dinner
I bet on the bone
fires serve
the city up
Living On
Consider what one might learn
by meditating on a corpse:
how the flesh can crawl, the bones
of a beautiful face break
the crust of fantasy like little moons
out of the ground, vacant snail-shells
still glistening with an off-white rheum.
Or consider swallowing two squares
of LSD & looking in the mirror:
what perfectly disintegrating visions
might be yours, & with what slight effort.
It’s exhilarating, really, to find this
blind matter – that it somehow coheres
despite its utter insensitivity to longing
or loneliness. It gives itself
only half-grudgingly to the chance
Getting Heavier
Prematurely grave –
sentences delivered with a note of finality,
syllogisms grasped & held in the mind
the way excess skin from a facelift
vanishes into a crack beside the ears –
I stretch myself over the same
mattress of bone, morning & evening.
I go on as if nothing happened,
as if I were free on my own recognizance
& this growing heaviness simply means
I need more sleep.
I’ve become adept at ignoring
the jagged piece of sky pressing down
on the back of my neck.
Since I stopped following the news,
my dreams supply all the missing details
Marrow
morning rain
only a dish of marrow bones
left in the world
Hanging
Go and be hanged, we call
to a clerk, to a schoolmaster,
to two cows in the wood,
to God, to children, to the man
that hangs on Shooter’s Hill,
filthy flesh shrunk to his bones.
Frequent Flyer
I was flying in an aircraft of bones
not the pilot not the ball-turret gunner
I was flying in an aircraft as if
in my own bones
my aluminium hide
the captain’s intercom voice
goes all through me and the flight
attendant’s safety instructions
her boredom buzzes against my rivets
like a trapped wasp
but I rise hungry to exceed myself
I dip a wing and turn
out from the lit grids of suburbs
with their unlikely multitude
of shadows which must be trees
and down there somewhere
Things to do with human bones in the Neolithic
Deflesh them with bone knives.
Let the wolves and ravens deflesh them.
Gather them into skin bags and bury them under the hearth.
Feed them beer.
Dig them up every fall and dance with them.
Dig ditches around them so the uninitiated cannot get too close.
Build mounds over them so the otherworld can ascend and be closer to us.
Organize them by size and type.
Rearrange them into new, mash-up ancestors.
Break them so they will not follow us in our dreams.
Suck out the marrow so their spirits will protect us in our dreams.
Burn them and place them in jars of clay decorated with rows of pits, as from missing teeth.
Erect stones around them in a circle so they will remember us who stand in the light.
White Night
Bones aren’t this color.
Their darkness is on the inside,
not the outside.
This is the white of a tunnel
in a paraffin candle
from which the wick has been pulled:
burning isn’t an option,
you have to keep moving to stay ahead
of the cold on its pale horse.
Colours
Red,
Black,
White.
Blood,
Ash,
Flesh.
Maroon,
Crimson,
Scarlet.
Shades of,
Vampiric,
Dessert.
Charred,
Burned,
Blacken.
Shades of,
Awakening
Eyes fluttering,
Open.
Hands beginning,
Movement.
Blurry,
Surroundings.
Unsure,
Choices.
Aching, stiff,
Bones.
From being,
Broke.
Years of,
Slumber.
No real,
Number.
Automaton
I have clockwork in my bones.
Hear it tick, hear it tock;
Clamoring abusive tones.
Hear the click of the lock.
I feel the gears turn in my chest;
Burning out, scraping hard.
But never-ever do they rest;
Hear them shout, ever-marred.
Look behind my crystal eyes;
See it go, watch with pride
For there within the clockwork lies
To and fro, side-to-side.
And see my heart is open wide;
How it was like a wired trap.
Once within, you're stuck inside
As it does often tend to snap.