Insidious temptation, this need to reflect

Upon things that refuse to expose themselves

For what they truly are…

Old bones that reanimate from within the

Confines of another sleepless night, and yes

I see them dancing there

Even still, capering shadows of an unburied

Past, Last Rites forgotten as these images reach

Out to caress my soul

With a kind of hurtful indifference, fractured

Nails that still cling to yellowed marrow leaving

Splintered traces of what should

Have been in the wake of this silent dirge

That resonates nonetheless in a jangling discord

Of broken chimes being lashed

By a thoughtless wind just beyond an unwashed

Pane of glass that covers its transparent disregard

With a tattered curtain made

Ancient by the smoke that even now drifts

Towards it from a cigarette I hold in one

Trembling hand as those old

Bones continue, here, in shadowed corners, to

Play out this pointless dance of things best forgotten

And caring not at all

About my inability to lay them down from whence they came.

END

“Old Bones”