flesh severance

There isn’t much salvageable once the curse comes down to cases, earthly burdens dragged around the carousel, ashes ashes as we fall. There isn’t much left once you know it’s surrender, the spark withdrawn, the spirit all but expired. We move slow with the deepening shadows as they sweep, the dull brushwork of the wind wielding leaf and bough, the afternoon streaked through tree and street. Gasps and gulps when out of breath or in the cups. The stagger of the beast as it realizes it’s been bled, this waking world, these dispatches of ache and awe.

There are words I wrote and words I meant to, the things I said again and again, apostrophe and epitaph and the glistening of the so and so. Flights stolen and wings unfolded, a flag snapping to. The negative space held open by stray syllables, the incidental capture of the parting of a star, eyes always open somewhere. Only episode and story, the leavings of the entity, the making of the most. What is stuck to encrypted in glyph and script, what endures the puzzle unexpressed.

There is a meat alive below the grander magnificences, an animal above the tread of tales and tongues. The further a fever founded in the boil and steam, the turn of the fallow flesh upon the spit, always more gravy than grave. The stiffness in the breathing, the burn down to the bone. We learn to live alone, down to each stick and every stone, less for more down to the seethe and sore. The reach of the mystery, the blue across the by and by. This uphill struggle, this downhill trend. The flesh never on the mend.