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in the ivy, dead, it lies,
baring bones and shriveled eyes.
a dead crow in the leaves.
in the grass it lay before.
now, it isn’t any more
than dead crow in the leaves.
tragedy had struck its wing,
now it lies, a broken thing,
a dead crow in the leaves.
i will take its bones, inter
skull and hip to mother earth—
a dead crow in her leaves.
time will show it become more,
more than feathers, drying gore.
a dead crow is the leaves.
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Little rabbit on the pavement,
where are you sleeping tonight?
What have you accomplished today?
"Nothing," whispers he, "I just got
lost, so lost."
Little rabbit, why have you left
home and hill to go a-roaming?
"I was told to follow my dreams
and they led me here before they
disappeared."
"I'm going to die alone:
a lonely bag of bones."
Little rabbit, why don't you
continue on this path you've chosen?
"Take a look around me," cries out he,
"there's nothing for me here but
death, cold death."
"I'm going to die alone:
a lonely bag of bones."
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Let the day perish wherein I was born,
and the night in which it was said,
"There is a man-child conceived."
Let that day be darkness;
let not God regard it from above,
neither let the light shine on it.
Let that night be solitary,
let no joyful voice come therein.
Why died I not from the womb?
Why did I not give up the ghost
when I came out of the belly? For
now should I have lain still and been
quiet. I should have slept.
Then had I been at rest!
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i am
the failed fruit
the futile child
who never grew
but longs to die
i am
the damaged dream
the backwards flesh
who never seems
to do his best
i am
the squandered sperm
the broken egg
who never earns
but will not beg
(for death)
i am
the bastard dirt
the homeless seed
who has no worth
that no one sees
i am
the neverend
andthe false start
no joy within
my wrinkled heart
/
Estuaries flow
endlessly from snow
eaten peaks. But no:
even they must stop.
Every ember choked;
everything, like smoke,
ebbs away. A yoke
even I must drop.
Exit this mortal
egg: scream, push, and pull.
Enter the jeweled
earth, come and gone.
Especially
eagle-eyed to see
exactly how I
end, God looks on.
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Tonight, my sopping bones melt through my skin–
here I will fade into the strips of soak–
enormity within their spongeing lines.
Enormity, and so it goes: a spot,
now spreading on my sheet, of sloppish mulch,
of squelching mush, of flesh and bone and blood
removed of form and shape: of hair and heart–
magnificent upon a time–now gruel
in greys expanding on an empty bed;
these bones were once a church, this blood was life;
yet now all fades in drying, grotesque lines.
A year ago, the bed was made the same,
no shape misplaced, no organ present but
dripped liquid on a crusty, oozing sheet.
Until tonight, the room had sat forgot,
sat gone in memory, but now the cold
enormity of aging porridge riles,
long trapped beneath sandpaper skin; the hot
enormity of sundered dreams recall
sheets grey and cracking, soaked and seeping, time
seems backwards, now, and here I lie; tonight,
not only will my bones retreat from flesh,
end wriggling on the bed like post-rain worms,
slop, fall, and creep, but it won’t serve to last:
sometime–in years, perhaps–I’ll grow anew.
Of this, I’m sure: my skeleton will grow,
form up, solidify; of this, I’m sure:
At present, I am melting on this bed.
Life leaves me, waterfalls away, bleeds out,
in sheets of hungry age it leeches, drips,
falls to the floor and proves that in the end,
enormity is nothing but a lie.
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