- Non-Erotic Poetry
- Don't Look Down
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Take the jawbone in your hand and believe.
Do not look away; recognize it as your own,
as that which hinged on a precious head
and made it speak, and give kisses
to lovers and children. Take it up,
run your fingers along the ridge and believe
that you are that: bone and earth,
and your fingerprints, melted now,
become corn, become the roots of trees.
Slide the life and words of this now
anonymous human round in your hand
and feel molars, now without their twins
now without moisture or movement
or the lively tongue between them.
This pit below you, this inevitable
dissolving into sand and bone,
you step across this chasm day by day
in theater, pretending not to notice
the skulls that heap below you
where yours will someday land.
So taste the honey despite the stinging bees
pluck the last strawberry,
cling to the branch. Live as if it's
Christmas, as if your precious tongue
and all its little stories
will go on, go on forever.
- COMMENTS
KOLKOREalmost 17 years agoGreat Carpe Diem poem. What an intriguing –concrete “mini death” of sorts you chose for a starting point for a love of life poem. <P>
Some approaches exist vis -a –vis time and the maxim of ‘live life to the fullest’. One is: live life to the fullest in every moment as if it’s your last; another (the one you seemed to follow) offers you to live every moment as if you’ll never die. I join you with my preference to the latter.
wildsweetonealmost 17 years agoi enjoyed this poem very much. that first line grabbed me and your writing held me to the end. thank you for sharing your poetry.
