Saturday, July 25, 2009

Before the next Charge

The freshly slain lay together as hills and plains,
birds' caws echo,
beetles nibble gums in skinned smiling mouths,
air tugs on torn clothes too weak to wear out their final threads,
moss spores pour into the sky from decomposing muscles,
bones whistle and rattle,
a gory musical gallery,
cats gracefully leap from ribcage to femur,
the lower strata's skeletal,
limbs entwine in patterns finer than latticework,
worms wriggle in little tunnels where meat and mud meet,
armies of ants and squadrons of flies dine on dried flesh,
beneath the bomb-battered shrapnel, ground-soil toils to swallow blood,
earth sucks loads of lymph,
rain washes ash through gaps in former people,
the skyline has burned down lower than the waterline,
skyscrapers are pyramid profiles on the landscape,
stacks of cracked office supplies overflow from broken windows,
crates and material are marrow greased,
it drizzles too lightly to put out fires fed by oily munitions,
vultures pass over looking for fresher eyes,
housewives' faces are leathery in their kitchens,
foxes eat their fill and bury the extra,
packs of wild dogs sniff out the hidden human,
pits of rot are warm from teams of teeming bacteria working, tireless,
treads crushed corpses with their mark in passing,
sewer pipes -exposed and ruptured- vomit on the scene,
rats gnaw on the fattest cockroaches,
brambles break the breathless breasts of once-men in rambling paths,
reeking ramparts buttress crumbling concrete walls,
pebbles pepper stagnant bodies,
uprooted trees straddle this sick sea,
full of charnel passageways.