you took my hand and i saw
bones leap from flesh, shedding bloodlines
stark white and grinning, naked
above discarded piles of skin
crumpled on the tile

you said, "open your eyes, child, be not afraid."
the air was infesting; the coffin molding in its shell.
i was hoisted up into the ceiling
to watch, to wait

for armistice: the warring tribes lived beyond
the reach of my fingertips, and death
had built a graveyard between my arms
and your body. i swore i'd never closed my eyes,
but darkness found me anyway

it always did, it always would.
and though i played hopscotch with
the onslaught, i was still rained under,
kept down. kicking, i hurled my weight into the other realms.
no good, no good. loss was at hand.
you took mine, and i trembled beneath the wake.

no gentle flow, this. it rocked me
my mouth melted away at the furious taste
before it could speak, in antidotes and tongues
i questioned only once the weight
of water, and was told it measured three

times the weight of man. i clutched two empires
between my webbed fingers.
i was a snake in the dragon's aftermath,
my vertebrae snapped and floundering.
i wadded through the limelight, and came out
scathed, broken, battered, lost
in the touch that death's subtleties could scream.

10/07/2003

Author's Note: okay. this is the "raw" version to the poem that mainon a schwartz and i wrote together, "for armistice: the dragon's aftermath." posted for Krista Brock by request! :)

Posted on 10/07/2003
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