ManicDDaily

Begins with S

Then there is the slithering
of snakes inside–
those stretches when Esses
eat you, slit
your “it,” style a switchblade
as salvation.

You mishear their hiss
as ‘yes,’ sliced
permission.  It’s also the hiss
of histrionic, suffering’s
seductive backwash; still,
it speaks to you–

until, at last–before
at last if you’re lucky–
you see, as if unhooded,
how unoriginal are
your sins.

Re-surfacing, you stitch.
Sew tight the lips
of the wound.
Smear the stains into some swath of something,
scarf the scar with some swath of something,
something busy, patterned,
something that won’t
show dirt.

*************************

Poem of sorts influenced by the brilliant but very dark poet, Paul Antschel, who wrote under the name Paul Celan in response to Grace’s prompt on With Real Toads.   Grace gives a brief biography of Celan, a Romanian Jew who survived World War II to become a poet, professor and translator, dying of  suicide in 1970.

The pic (of a turkey vulture) as well as the poem is mine.  All rights reserved.

PS – process note–Ess is a spelling of “S” and “esses” –S plural.  Esse is also the German word for eat (I think?)  and Latin for to be? (I think.)  (Not completely sure how that relates to the poem, but why I spelled it out.)