Steven Pretend (Birth & Death)

Skeletons sit around discussing Plato
like albino matches
quaking from the fire,
but my other half
(twisted drunken fiend he is)
looks forward to tasting mud,
gristle and laments,
and whistles from broken alley merchants.
The chink in my soul
gives reverence to grief,
while others run
I dare the hole to swallow.

Fall deep the dead
from shadows eve,
where all frail sorrow
ought end.
Nothing can split
the nails of sleep,
fertile bone
will never bend.

And there it is,
my scabbard rusting in a cemetery puddle
after the game is played
and I am but sand in a bell.
Ears cloth,
lips apart letting breath go,
eyes jagged
and heart in cusps of harmony.
From jelly skin to skinned soul,
from butter bones to tiger pattern liver,
from careless footsteps into trenches of tears.
A life amongst billions of lives
a sun within the thunder...

@Steven Francis poems 2009