Glass,
traps
one spark
in the ferns,
spirits of the dead,
tethered above the wet creek bed,
guiding the departed through the mangrove roots tonight.
They hover in the liminal space between the living and the silent wet bush graves.
We did not know we caught a wandering spirit alive, glowing with the pale green light of someone trying to find their way through the gully.
Unscrewing the cold rim of the glass I watched the little ancestor crawl out across my thumb to hesitate a moment in the damp night air before heading upwards into the canopy towards the guiding southern stars.
Gall stones large as hens’ eggs,
pale kidneys buoyant as seabirds.
Shriveled livers,
yet some so bloated they have features
as if the organ had drowned
imprinted by a sleeping face.
A fetus floating in a deeper space than
can be calculated by light years.
There is less purpose in preserving
the anatomy of death now.
The carnival wagons have gone away,
the fish-man in his tank;
the tuberous lungs of the malformed
free now from any glassy ogle.
However, in the medical museum
bottled body parts still wait
in their mason jars
for a hand to commence
death's long-prophesied unscrewing.
Gall stones large as hens’ eggs,
pale kidneys buoyant as seabirds.
Shriveled livers,
yet some so bloated they have features
as if the organ had drowned
imprinted by a sleeping face.
A fetus floating in a deeper space than
can be calculated by light years.
There is less purpose in preserving
the anatomy of death now.
The carnival wagons have gone away,
the fish-man in his tank;
the tuberous lungs of the malformed
free now from any glassy ogle.
However, in the medical museum
bottled body parts still wait
in their mason jars
for a hand to commence
death's long-prophesied unscrewing.
My pernicious thoughts
is loosing me,
unscrewing me,
and killing me.
My scary musings
is taking me
on a rigmarole
to nowhere, it seems
Like a vagabond
with no direction,
it keeps pulling me
to all directions.
And surely soon
it will leave me blue.
One mighty pull will it take
to fill me full again.
My pernicious thoughts
keeps loosing me,
unscrewing me,
and killing me.
And, i can't fight it.
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