It is the time of stripping down
Shedding hair and
Shaving wood
To the bare bones
Chafing off old skins
Like disconnected memories
Worn thin and eroding credibility
Once it proudly gleamed as ivory
Polished and carved into ornate shapes
Tiny people, elephants and Bogotá’s
Gleaming cities, mountains and wild elk
But now just empty husks of corn
And the cleavage
Between layers of gray sedimentary rock
Where my hands seek out desire
And I watch my fingers disappear inside
The dark moistness that sighs
The gases of swamps
Or to penetrate the nitrogen blue skies that
You could stare at forever
And never see a thing
Until your unblinking eyes dry and shrivel
Like raisins in the sun or
The smooth skins of amphibians
Shellacked with fused slime and cataracts
Nothing can be seen now
Nothing to see
But the translucent orbs of dull lights and
Other things once known
The skin of me another day
Tough as leather
A saddle of history
Ridden out and put to pasture
In an unmarked grave at the top of the hill...
It is the time of stripping down now
Chafing wood and
Whittling old skin
To the bare bones
