rib

RIB

White
Explosive
Flesh Fresh, delicious
Was your hot
PowderSkin

Powder keg.

Rubbed right thin into air.
Dissolved
in a Flash
of Passion.

Worn clean.
Burned Back to Bone.

To be now quiet.
Blank like snow blankets.
Minute
& shivering
muted inside from where there is no sound.

Nor can be. Where sound runs only to well
deep at the dam of lips
And flows NO FURTHER. You look in the mirror.
The face of the thing,
a supple question

Stares you in

And the answers
Stand in lines beneath eyes,
Those ripples of the
Happened to;



Dropped

Responses
Of the bath where you feel your own form,
Solid, like that stone (plunk) but
Push hips out
Boned Phrases rise
Like steam and fat.

I was on the verge of…
Because I meant to…

Half-desires, apologies so Hollow
Half-hide that ache to know:
You are a body of words/
/Breath across
An empty bottle lip.

Tip Soft, sealed and sterile
Room, room yes
Soft with Simple noises.
Here No Nouns or verbs
That speak without, without
In corridors unspecified.

They run along
Like children… behind you!
Always saying something else.
Always leaving things unsaid.
Did they mangle the phone
Lines in Cat’s Cradle games?

Or were we a Quick toy in the
Palm of God, grotesque and shaking?
Played upon and played out, in lines carved there?
Or did we hide instead, shutting it all out
Like fingers folded over?
Close with night
and secrets: the crease between each finger a
Witness blind greased
And dusty, thick
With blinking light.

It was more than a physical
Conversation
That we had in that place, prison or womb: the
Questions of your
hands on me
seemed to stop up
all fear.

Now white worn away to the rib of Adam.
But a fist is (inside) quiet, warm
And Red.