I

The pyramids, of limestone skin
Were flayed to feed man’s living need.
So mountains bear the half-healed scabs
Of quarries cast in ages past.

These tombs of rock, of king and sea,
Each a fleshless ossuary,
Are mortal too. Build bone from bone,
Consume the dead and call it home.

II

Now is come a quiet hour
Within the circling Day of Man,
And we, the fading living, build
In peace, in frames of stone and steel
The bones of cities born to yield
Dry glory by the dusty crush
That mighty souls will, singing, rain
From heaven’s door, a cleansing flame
And so make fast their mortal name.

Descendants all, all blind-born babes,
Born to mothers, and to sons
Of mothers. The ravening bawl
Bundled in maternal arms,
Crimson, snot-nosed, tearful, writhing,
Misery untouched by soothing,
Seeks only food. So now the breast
Is borne between its wiry lips
To offer milk, ’til milk no more
Remains to quench unending thirst.
To them, we offer all we are,
So they shall take all that we were.
The suck proceeds. First fat and lights,
Then bone and muscle slither down,
Disjected skin curls on the ground.

And so the pale, swollen son
Will wipe its mouth, palpate its jaw,
Slouch away in search of more –

III

Caged heart, that breaths the iron quag
And spouts wet air. From starting thud
To last – the still and quiet corpse
All swaddled in clotted bombazine –
You beat in dark. Whether the power
You force through flexing limbs brings forth
Acts of love or raging hate,
Illumination never falls
To show the world your true intent.
What grace it is, to be unknown.
Entropic grace. And so the night
That rushes on, our final fate,
Brings in its glossy, raven beak,
A promise of deliverance.

Here we wet our blood-plump toes
Beside a sea of darkened light
That crawls beyond horizon’s end.
Grain by grain, the way the waves
Expand the ocean’s cool domain,
Until the ocean covers us,
Drowns good and evil in its murk.

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