ManicDDaily

No Shortcut in Art of Dream

You led me onto the shortcut; we had to walk
our bikes through the ruts. I already doubted
the time-saving, the mustard dirt depressions stumbling
more than one step, the embankments that separated
this path from the road unsettling, when I saw
the first body, the individual hairs of crown and beard shockingly
wire-like in the way death
turns strands to prongs, each follicle
an endpoint, lips dragged into
scowl.

It was half-lodged in a cavity, a
collapsing catacomb
in the mound–
did I call your name out loud or just think whoa, that you would see
it soon enough- for you had stalled behind me now–and that we better phone the police
at the other side, when I walked on past three more,
their hair crested in the odd slopes of bodies’ fall, rumpled waves
of sleeve and pant, skin yellowed
as the clayed earth–and maybe we should turn back, I thought;
absolutely that we should turn back, for I could see the blur of more
around the bend, and called
your name but could not see you, cursing that part of you
that fed on line and shape, color
and symbol, that, even in horror, would look for what
might be made into art, that you might draw
from, when it occurred to me that there were possibly assailants
too waiting ahead, with sharp-knived mouths, fists gripping,
and that maybe even going back would not
get us out of this, and
look at me now too, writing of it.

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Admittedly a rather odd draft poem that I thought I had posted last night (the first day of April) as a possible start to a poem a day for the month. But it is not a regime I think I can keep this year, and even last night I forgot to press the “publish” button. Agh.

I will link this to dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night.