Something Old, Something New
Your face is hard:
the charred skin like leftover metal,
the river-map on your chin.
You remind me of someone
I've never met – it's those sprigs
of coal in your right eye,
the laundered sheet
tugged over your ghost shoulders,
the way your feet
poke out at the end,
every toe gone gangrene-black,
the way they're splayed.
Everything about you smells
of smoke; perhaps
your entrails are ashen, too.
Your buck teeth
are stuck for words; you stare
out of your mirror,
unspeakable. Kiln-fired,
your mask beneath the mask of gold
is sold, is as cold
and still and brittle,
as the shocked and tortured corpses
of the lost
who litter the landscape.
Look at your form.
Pure desert storm.
