Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Dead Weekend

“The smell of decomposing flesh was so intense
that lighted candles, passed through the opening into a vault,
were instantly extinguished” -Catharine Arnold.

I.
It was yesterday earlier
when the nightlight sunburn
chaffed against the Anguilla Japonica flesh
braised to pure fascination
in the mind of the reader
sick with non-fiction sweat.

My brother saved the package
the gloves you knit him came in.
He liked your felt handwriting:
it took from the hairs knelt
before the lobe of your right ear.

Relationships, broken down
to dime-sized nipples, harden.
How intellectual!
How po-mo!

rang a miasma of sinful tolerability;
A necropolis of soul.

Imagine the conversation turned
to the form forbidden lust takes
when acted on.
A feather can say what I won’t.
As one falls moon dust feels off
an always sun burnt chest.

II.
When eels are prepared in Tokyo
they are filleted through the back
to not recall the calligraphic cut
of a samurai performing
seppuku unto himself.

III.
It was yesterday earlier,
and a dead weekend,
when I visited a cemetery
splayed out like an arm folding.
It was rapt with trees once considered
to be pagan by the Romans and as
I searched for my great-grandparents
druids danced among yew trees
whittling themselves into projectile weapons:
Crossbows to fend off grave robbers
or finish off the nearly dead
dying in urban plague pits.
It is true that exploding coffins
terrorized many religious tombs.
It is true that felons were buried
on the northern side of cathedrals.
It is true the feet of old world dead
faced east so, come resurrection,
they could stand up more easily.
And It is true
that I thought relationships hardened
in the absence of loved ones
But, memories decompose faster
when they are not around.

I got lost on the cemetery
and failed twice to find
any of my dead.

I’m sorry,
sometimes your grandson
gets distracted.