Poem: Relentless

 

Relentless

 

hungry ladder of ribs

not guarding a name,

climbing itself

to rummage where arteries slept.

 

to pinch bones

and scrounge for fossils:

a fragment of a lover,

a figment of past fear,

a crumble of fingertip.

 

the genie of last breath

breaches the skull and

wishes forth a special time,

where kisses once misbehaved.

 

and then it no longer matters,

 

the whiffles and gusts,

or the whistles that scurry in circles,

through the cracked, chalky pottery

of a vanished face.

 

what matters to such empty sockets

are the wealthy yesterdays.

the kind a ghost could scour for hope. 

 

and so it stumbles

 

through a sarcophagus for the senses,

amid warrens of half-truth,

mumbling a semblance of thought,

never to rest.

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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"