Chronic Exhumations

Over and over again, I creep away
to excavate the dead, examine the corpses
searching secrets concealed underground.
I expose lifeless limbs to the light
with soiled fingers as dirty nails part
the ground of the graves they dug.



Fingerprints that once seared flesh and soul
peel like putrid petals from dying roses
lining caskets with traces of the dead.
Shoulders once soft, shift upward
in harsh angles, slicing fabrics
with the razor sharpness of time,
and the neck, caved, gagging on unspoken truths
lead to the withered curves of faces.
Fluid cheeks, translucent blue membranes
whisper words that I can see through,
as eyes reside where life should be,
where light should shine, but
I am drawn into dark empty orbs,
into the black hole of hollow souls.



Downward, liquid breasts ooze though ribs
into empty breathless, heartless cavities,
all devoured in parasitic cruelties.
Shriveled wombs, hips and legs all dried to bone,
useless ragged vessels of proclivity,
tributes to the weapons they made of it.
I view nothing new here each time I come,
any understanding, compassion or truth,
turned to humus long before they died
and each visit only reveals progressive decay
as they return from where they came,
into the soil, into the earth, deep underground.
And yet I return, over and over again.