The Language of Corpses

I. Angst

A cacophony of shadows, and all I feel is fear;

bricklayers of history... we 

stretch beneath the stale breath of catacombs, thick with

chipped skulls, the musky odor of a thousand deaths;

I spy the stare of eternity in empty sockets, which speak to us

in the language of silence; the gaps between words.

And like you, I wait, beneath the rubble of time, holding my breath (in a way)

for the terrified last… We, careful to sidestep the blood-soaked potholes of history – bent, broken, plastered and re-broken. 

On each side, the boiling cauldrons of martyred flesh.

There is a dawn breaking on the blood horizon, just past the smoke and stench of burnt bodies, offered up – awful spice offerings to nameless gods with no faces.

You, Humanity, an ideology gone sour; you, Humanity, the seed of contradiction in “hopeful existentialism”; you, Humanity, a disease with no beginning, and one, 

without end.

II. Sorrow

I play with words like pebbles; skip them down streams endlessly, unsuccessfully.

Out further, where lake meets sky, I aim my frustrations when impatience choke-holds, boxes my ears, tells sad stories that hit in places unexpected. “An Ode to Melancholy”,* he said, “An Ode to Rage and Sorrow”, I replied.

Swamp deep in a dream I can’t remember; the mud, a poison that chars my skin.

III. Hope

As death in dreams, so in life – rebirth. A reward for the pangs of burnt flesh, crispy endings in the fire of rage; a burned down Babylon of the self, you are. But you

keep breathing through the thickness, the flames, the fire, looking for hope in the eyes of a bird that escapes you. You awake, step barefoot through ash, let flesh fall from bone where new skin – smooth as a frog’s belly – emerges.

* Keats “An Ode to Melancholy”