Poem: Restless

 

Restless

 

hungry ladder of ribs

not guarding a name,

climbing itself

to rummage where arteries once thrived

 and scrounge for fossils:

a fragment of lover,

a figment of fond past,

a wisp of caress.

 

breezes breache the skull 

and it remembers a time when two people  

wonderfully misbehaved.

but the wind kicks up 

into whiffles and gusts 

which whistle to scurry and chase in circles,

 

and then it all scatters, nothing to hold onto,

inside the whispery, cracked, chalky pottery

of a vanished face.

 

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5/8/24 ... 

2/9  "slept" replaces "once slept" ... "matters" replaces "matters now"

2/7  "past" replaces "gone" ... "crumble" replaces "last crumb"  (the sound of a single word can wreck the whole thing, just like in music) ... "vanished" replaces "lost" 

2/6 ... "time" replaces "place"