Skin & Bones
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1
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taken for granted
all things fall
in place or out
but they fall
all the same
stumbling slowly through thick sunshine air
sky blue like an Egyptian ceiling painting
of a smiling, dying bull-crocodile god
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trying to retain
some simplicity
of lines
in words or out
I fall
all the same
into more intensely abrasive catacomb
descriptions of finely stretched skin
over the most delicately carved bones
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skin & bones
all one owns
to to the best
we can
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skin & bones
skin & bones
plain folk homes
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2
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beating & tearing
at sound-blistered ears
hunting & hiding
from forest fire fears;
confused by understanding
mother figures teaching fingers
how to phone home
every time that feeling
of being lost creeps in
to sooth these tired ears
that cannot bear to hear
of home or phones
rattling up & down
this old box of
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skin & bones
all one owns
to to the best
we can
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skin & bones
skin & bones
plain folk homes
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May 73
Another piece built on repetition, structure, & conflicting sensations – ‘abrasive’ ‘finely’. Echoes with no source or resolution. Verses start simple then stumble into complex syllables, allusions & confusing images so that ‘simplicity’ becomes ‘complexity’ so rapidly one never fully grasps the simple – it gets yanked out of your hands.
I was, still am, fascinating by the Egypt of the Kush. I watch endless documentaries on royal tombs, mummies, lost cities. On the east coast I read books on the Egyptian pantheon of god & goddesses. The story of Osiris was as compelling as the Christian beliefs that over-turned them. Sobek is the crocodile god, while Apis is the bull god. Why I put them together is lost to my memory 🙂
The chorus is a return to the simple. ‘catacomb’ contrasts with ‘plain folks homes.’ Also the realization that mummies, regardless of who they were, how old they were, how desiccated they were, they are still skin & bones. The same skin & bones we have today. The human body hasn’t undone any major structural change in the recorded history of mankind.
The second section steps away from simple to embrace busy images that flow in a dream like logic – blistered ears, to forest fires. Music has always played a big part in my life – I can remember coming back from hearing a live band with sound-blistered ears. As a drunk I sometimes suffered from telephonites – calling friends to maintain, create some contact, context – that I may have found but never really felt. In the end I was doing the best I could to feel at home in my own skin & bones.
TOpoet 