PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

There's a body, sitting, decomposed, above the stirring dirt
in the Emil Ann Lynn cemetary where the stones sit forgotten.
Once a vessel made for pretty; made for men - their fevered gripping,
which took the form of harsher breaths and quicker, darting, jarring thrusts;
the body lay at peace in stillness; its face a battered, anguished fold
of all that once stood form to follow, attracting us like moths to bulb.
Near to there sits a man in booth, his shovel spade all sharp and set;
but his ear takes rest upon the knob and he'll not be warded by the smell,
nor the sight nor sound of flesh and meat as it peels and patters down
on cobblestones and drying leaves: a feast for warms and morbid throngs
who burrowed in the dusted warmth, scavenging for life like thieves.
The shape she made so proudly shown now blobbing to amorphous piles
that settle 'til the wind may swell and swirl them into morbid funnels.
The storm clouds passing through the grounds all fattened with their oldest thunder
will pour upon her fleeting shape and rend its remnants all askew,
but life as drawn from graying skies, washing her towards the curb -
where gutters there may drink her in and join her with the flows of waste.
As lightning strikes the booth alight, the man may fumble over turns
and switches made of plastic caster, tossing glance to the thickened night.
The granite carving epitaphs and recent-weeded mourning hedgerows
will force him to recite his duty and lay his grip upon his handle.
Despite the harshness of the rain, the humid blanket on the graves,
he'll drag his spade, his feet and thoughts along the winding pathway forth.
The cake of mud upon his boots, a whistle song upon his lips,
he'll dig a plot for a body that has broken down and carried on.