Poem: Skeleton Contemplation

 

Skeleton Contemplation

 

vultures peck

shreds from the flesh torn by 

sharp yanks of wolves, my veins

as barbed as roses squashed as a roadkill snake

and the prune-smooth vultures

stab to tug off strips so glossy slovenly oozy 

stab stab stab through a mania of flies  

until my skull gawks gummy with blood,

plum-sized sockets fleshless and tasked 

to toil at a skeletal abacus in unwalled night's tomb.

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1/7/25 eds .. (very hard poem to work)

10/16/24 eds

“Contemplating One’s Own Skeleton”

 

The essential elements of this mystical vision

are the being divested of flesh and the

numbering and naming of the bones.

                                                            Mircea Eliade

                                                            Shamanism