Too Short to be Sickly Sweet

What is this but tatter. I’d try and capture it in but one line, yet with such I must
Begin with context, and flesh it out between us-
There. I begin with a word–frail.

Digs deep, moles about in ribcages where hearts and lungs play drums and yet
Yet. Not just, but hangs about the temples-and-ears. And shoulders, still, yes, hung
Tattered.

So it is two. An act of holes and to the touch like spider shells on webs.
Barely felt save when running requires a headlong rush into something, well,
Deep. Ember of hesitation. Nuance of the shush, and hush. A thing of stumble, but-

With frail brings carapace, an elaboration of exoskeletal thought hung wisped
Hollow between the gills, and immasculine. Hauberk-heavy, though. Unlike frail.
A weighty thing. Cages and prisms and other
Open things closed. Theater. Colosseum. Mausoleum, which brings us to a connected
Winter thought–

Sprawling like ruined remembered glory, frail and carapace hangs like a ball-
And-chain, like a ragged flagged thing, all taut in wind for flying but not. Stay with me.

This ex-pla-nae grows long-toothed, I know, two beggars chewing the same bone
Skin sloughed down to the joint-knobs in selfish sadist-fashion
Burrowing between, say, homes, and leaving behind what? Nubbins and flappy-
Wet sloughed slippery flesh. Splat.

We, the people, long for a hardened skin, like insects and crabs, and sharp
Spines and all those rigid breakable pieces to keep us in.

But we bulge in our translucent-thin skin, shining the blood out,
Sharing the veins.

Beside frail slides fragile, the summation of anti-flexibility. A tiny, tinkling
Clarion call, it waits until Man Dons Steel upon His Mighty Steed and

Crush. But this isn’t about the breakables. This isn’t about fragile. And shatter. Twins, yes,
Frail and fragile, one the lesser, and opposites too, but sometimes they think alike.

They help to break. Tear, really, the not-carapaces we collect about us
Clothes, really. Yet to tear. It needs a poky thing. Flagstaff a mile wide and turgid
Rigid, apologies, spiked or sharpened with knives and flint.

Native American words, really. If you deep it in enough, it tastes right. Tobacco puffs and everything.

And what are we woodcarvers but sculptors who see a thing within the grain
And scoop it out? Burrow about wholly. Separate the outer parts to pulp
Change it to kindling, and tinder, and kinder tindling–I digress this context.
But I can’t restart. Not after I’m so far now.

Large, then. Massive-thought places. Churches without roofs. Rooves.
Meeting places with empty basements. More hollow, empty things all full of frail.
In different measurements.

Holocaust bunkers with rooms
A mile wide and high will hardly stay
Awake through the whole thing, but break at the weakest seam, probably
Maybe where the water leaks in the middle, forming pools and puddles
The armymen can’t remove with their guns, all locked up and safe.

Now with catacombs in mind, all wide and without light and deep, think
In all the forms of weak.

Then cloak the coffins in flags, and rags, and sewed man-made things
Cover-coverings as if we play at being strong but revel in the shapes
We take
Between
Filaments and filaments and itty tiny little spider-legged things,
And silk, yes. Feels good to the thin-skinned. And we all are.
All but the praying mantises. Mantids. Whatever; I digress.

Cloak it all in shadow-formed between our fingers, what we made of this
Thing (civilization/religion/God/hope) and slide prickles through
Kevlar Velcro, shark-skin–the ocean holds a lot of scrape–or thorn stems fresh.

Hang it high, like where the heavens would be, like where clouds make love
And squirt, hang it where the sun shines forever and ever.

Context over, here, think this, but one tattered line,

I am divine.