11-27-2016, 01:45 AM
EDIT 1.
They move through osseous sockets and tubes,
rest on mattresses of swarming Springtails,
pallid feelers finding ways through limestone,
through the riddled and broken.
They are not miners, more like blind mice they scurry.
They journey inside a honeycombed clock
where time is heaped and must be stored.
We are a curious parcel of voyeurs,
matrons with cowed or unruly children,
bearded youths in rain slickers and hiking boots,
loud middle-aged Moroccans,
mouths open we gulp the shut-in light.
I allow the group to move ahead of me,
the better to listen to the beetles and the bones.
The song is old: hard forewings lift and rattle,
a chitinous flight of sound -
words in dry shins, in brittle canals,
in the caps and shells of piled skulls,
a symbiotic duet,
the falling semblance of still submerging remains.
It is an underground song, a tale without a tongue
to guide any thought,
nevertheless, this entombed music
scuttles over my mind
a requiem for all the severed, and unearthed.
They move through osseous sockets and tubes,
rest on mattresses of swarming Springtails,
pallid feelers finding ways through limestone,
through the riddled and broken.
They are not miners, more like blind mice they scurry.
They journey inside a honeycombed clock
where time is heaped and must be stored.
We are a curious parcel of voyeurs,
matrons with cowed or unruly children,
bearded youths in rain slickers and hiking boots,
loud middle-aged Moroccans,
mouths open we gulp the shut-in light.
I allow the group to move ahead of me,
the better to listen to the beetles and the bones.
The song is old: hard forewings lift and rattle,
a chitinous flight of sound -
words in dry shins, in brittle canals,
in the caps and shells of piled skulls,
a symbiotic duet,
the falling semblance of still submerging remains.
It is an underground song, a tale without a tongue
to guide any thought,
nevertheless, this entombed music
scuttles over my mind
a requiem for all the severed, and unearthed.