his skin is paragraphed, the box
is checked. toes are tagged
and severed in reports.
missing person, discovered
head, and readers face contorts.
so gruesome, the unknown, macabre,
and eerie. because we equate
death as alien. we reject it
in all of it’s forms.
it is the one thing to which
the living will never concede.
lest they be dead! and no longer
living, therefore strangers
to the knowing, unknowingly
unwitting to the inexperience.
death is a phase of life
or vice versa.
but it is not so gruesome,
nor macabre to express it
with a little bit of mystery,
wit, originality, calculation.
i would prefer my skin abstract
in prose, save my toes
and bite the nails to spare
your chattering teeth.