Red Skeletons

Upon request, I've decided to post this poem, "Red Skeletons," for your reading pleasure:

I.

Confusions and sex
playing off the all-too-natural
instincts
to breed to find pleasure
What havoc has ensued
In the loins of this species—

this beast—

Driving away the cognitive distinction
between we and the animals
So casually do we find ourselves
quivering on sweat-stained sheets
utterly lacking control
Red skeletons lie in piles
scattered by the violent wind
exhaled as her back arched
and he collapsed—

Red Skeletons:

passions scattered by lazy pleasure.

We've spent ten thousand years
pretending we were human,
Our minds the sites of some certain greatness
Language alone surely sets us apart
from whichever creatures we don't want to be

There is beauty in a dried rose
red hanging upside-down
beauty indescribable
a memory on the verge of crumbling
dust in another breath of
violet wind

If only
To be thrown across the room
a fit of rage
befitting passion
unknown
red and unusually cowardly yellow
waiting to crash against the wall
or be caught
received gently – relieved

Shall we be denied
Soft voice, soft touch
the myths of a mythical time age
once read about
in our long lost youth?
Anthologies pretend
Wordsworth and Shelley were real
No
in fact we have always imagined ourselves
something more than a means—
procreators, unwillingly

If be
forgotten red skeletons
(crumbling former roses)
dust to dust
merely
dirt beneath our feet—
memories lost scattered
during the rush
climax
—call me not, then,
Human


II.
Redefine a mistake
perhaps human
fragment from the whole
lost in an abyss
spun in silk and welcoming
Still
A glass floor cracking
shattering every step
I take
Nothing and for myself
Still
I grope the darkness
for a presence
guiding touch also still groping

Somewhere an ideal
sliding off the shelf in the back of this mind
perhaps mine
A clock ticking threatening
wading through deafness
no brick walls still
too solid
An idea
not confirmed
but by shallow lies imaginations
no soul to back up
no intentions
And in me an empty hand
air to grasp
only—

No person willing intimately
and lonely real-estate at my side.

How Human can one be
not driven by desire
not hoarding gold
Naught but some starved skeleton
deep red fading
tainted and tempted by the blackness
Soles weary
walking and pacing and too much broken glass

Pitch black pinching
too blind—

to see a welcome face too distant
Distanced yet
ever on the verge of (or and)
breaking

What is human
which can be seen
never
felt

So what am I
revision or mistake?
not driven by hope for sex
This timid frame so filled overfilled
dead language dead words
a prose once beautiful
now, I am told,
wilted
So too must I be

Once silver blue eyes
hottest flame therein burning
unstirred by a stare
now find
green themselves
in a placid clouded mirror—

Grey, even, when the wisdom of the eye
finds less motivation
Still.

I am
no great thing
This, at least, self-affirming
Grey eyes see great things
beauty not muted not lacking
Tired feet never tire
gladly carrying the weight of my world
Empty hands give all
have given will give
to any hand which will fill them

Human
What am I but these things?
Find me
my hand my eye
in this dark abyss.