Tuesday, December 5, 2023

Shard

I'm jealous of the bloodstains on the highway

The rotting chunks of meat, bone shards, and 
torn tendons

Tufts of matted fur anchored to degloved flesh, 
haphazardly ripped into jagged shapes like the 
world's most fucked-up jigsaw puzzle

Flayed muscle that masks whatever bodily form 
might have once existed, now little more than 
an abstract thought

It's the quiet that holds my appeal, not the gore

The stillness empty vessels must feel as life 
continues on around them

Getting picked over by the scavengers

Spread thin and mashed into asphalt under the 
weight and friction of rubber

Thoughts and sounds don't matter to a corpse or 
to its pieces

But I am painfully, hopelessly alive

A collection of faltered attempts to dilute the static 

My head is filled with razor blades and fish 
hooks, broken light bulbs and shattered mirrors, 
rusted nails and Mother's fine China

The fragments clatter about, rattling inside my 
empty skull with an unbearable thunder

The metal and glass tears and bites and grates, 
shredding the endocranium and splintering 
bone

I fear that even in death there will be remnants 
of the noise

The quiet only ever makes things louder

(2023)