Tender are the soles

The body whines inaudibly
running organs with life's
friction or electrically charged
circles, as if one organism
could be fulfilled.

Cash can be exchanged for dignity,
pennies and thoughts are donated
in parking lots and churches
liberally, naked feet are sensitive
where there are rocks worn down
to pebbles by caloussed souls
heaving their weight in grains
of sand.

A mile more
to go
with these legs, feebled and folded
they foretell the weight of what we carry,
with the shoulders pinned to the sky
the strings held us up, dancing and frayed,
until the puppeteer, robotics engineer, and fear
take over,

it was all for the show,
since there was nothing the human could tell
about soles moving on
light as can be
like water
we cannot breathe.


Painting by Ford Madox Brown [Public domain], 'Jesus washing Peter's feet' c. 1852-56 via Wikimedia Commons.

The Incantation of Sprung

The ringing had to have been

the resistance of air in being dissected

with a rugged swung scythe.

A crude way to make matters worse.

Should we speak up

so breath can chime in and tune on its own
accord to T for truths, sinews,
or sing along so we know

where we were going
when it is over?

Souls dissipate most visibly
when the sun is a mere

ten degrees above the arc at the end of All

and they blush as they come
into vulgar exposure.

The vertiginous extension of body

feels its mineral composition,

just as the mountain has long since
gathered here and crumbled there

under the broom of wind and whistling.

The wait is the same atomic gravitas

so we make music on its shoulders,

conjuring notes we hope will

carry,
raining colors in a natural spring

Forward marching over the detritus
of the Others
calcified fragments, ground in silt and 
carried by such quick sand.

To hear and to be heard over the years

something so sharply.

Watercolor by Karl Bodmer (1836) Assinboin in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.