WHEN SKELETONS MAKE LOVE
after
a meditation by Susannah Carleton
When skeletons
make love,
Do they look
into each other’s eye
Sockets and see their own reflection?
Does the smell
of cherry pie
Cooling by an
open window
Remind them of
red organs?
Do they exchange
gifts of malas
Made of dried
hair strung through
Cavities once
filled with gold?
When skeletons
make love,
Does it hurt the
first time?
Do wives and
husbands
Slowly wear each
other down,
Grinding their
love to a place
Where there is
no bone?
Do they notice
swooping bats,
Flying through
their ribs
When they make
love?
Do skeletons
make love in an
Embrace that
begins with the
Idea of my
skull/your skull,
And ends not
knowing whose
Skull is whose,
and sometimes
With no skull at
all,
Or with their
lover’s skull
Where their
pelvis had been
And their pelvis
where
Their lover’s
head once was?
Is this the
essence of why they
Make love, these
skeletons?
When skeletons
make love,
Do they feel it
is a piece of the
Old lost world
returning?
Is it the part
that is like running
Into one problem
after another,
Buried in debt
and broken
Machinery, body
pains and
The ongoing
anguish waiting to
Bring a person
down
Or tangle them
up?
When skeletons
make love
Do they wish to
be dead
Or just in bed,
lights out,
Next to each
other, panting,
Then relaxed
breathing?
Does it matter
that they are
Empty vessels of
the evaporated
Fluids
that contained them?
Do they receive
food from
One another,
only to ask,
“Where’s the
water?”
When skeletons
make love,
It is as
unavoidable as an extinct
Tree, a shoulder
blade,
Summoned from
another
Dimension––Boneholders,
Blessed
with the world’s trust.
When skeletons
make love,
Do they see
their jaw-words
As the antique
discarding
Of
the shaved dice of sex?
No more walking
on top of this world
When
skeletons make love.
I think of love
as the child
Of skeletons the
way a charnel
Ground must
think about
The mystery of a
world
Re-creating
itself again and
Again
as its offspring.
And what of
those eagle claw
Fingers––what mesmerizes
them
Now, when
skeletons make love
To a sound like
beer bottles
Across the river
of pleasure’s
Sharp
and colorless touch?
When skeletons
make love,
Do they wish
they could take
Back every
minute wasted
Under the
tin-roof of precedent
Required to
suddenly understand
Exactly how
inseparable they’d been?
Because all
things are beautiful
And subject to
that which adorns,
When skeletons
make love
Sometimes it is
with coal dust
And ash that the
scaffolding
Of humanity is
cloaked,
Sometimes with starfish
and
Sand dollars or
strands of
Seagrass or
halos of kelp,
Sometimes it is
with crystal-wrapped
Femurs,
sometimes quartz or bullets
Embedded in a
spine,
Some skeletons
come to one
Another with
feathers or ribbons
Tied to bones,
some lashed tight
With rope or
barbed wire
Around neck
vertebrae,
Some attach
silver, rubies,
Turquoise or
jade to their bones,
Weave garlands
of fresh flowers
Or bits of cloth
or brass bells,
Stamps, coins or
fur, perfumed oils,
Arnica or
candles that lit them
Up and attracted
moths,
For there is
nothing to resist once
The eroded heart
is gone––
Having peeled
through its skins,
Leaving sorrow
and doubt like snakes
In the costume room of angels,
They are free to
cross any distance
That alive, was
only a reflection
Of the closeness
surging between them
When
skeletons make love.
This was an
intimacy grown from
Death––for they
had never entirely
Approved of
being human
Nor grief’s
uncontrollably lonesome
Loss, its heavy
and slow moonrises,
The
coolness of tears.
They had
forgotten to worry about
Fireballs of
lightning striking them twice,
About pool table
hid guns,
About the
sadness of old things––
Beesmoke and all
that goes awful
Wrong
inside a person’s head.
This one had to
be right about
Everything. That one was a witch.
Many rolled out
the rocks in
Their head as
soon as trouble
Even
suggested itself on the horizon.
They could not
choose their dreams.
When skeletons
make love,
They find ways
without words
To describe the
acute feeling
Of being chosen
by a stranger,
Even after the
funeral. Certain
Kinds of love
you can’t see,
Certain kinds of
love require
The
knowing strength of bone.
Certain kinds of
love need
Exactly what you
cannot give,
Certain kinds of
love are nothing
More
than not overdressed.
When skeletons
make love, there is
No pride, too
late for breakfast,
No insistent
sordid quarrel,
No rudeness,
shock, or blasphemy,
The monster they
became.
The marrow of
love is all there is,
Not the sense of
one gradually has
Losing the
ability to make out leaves,
The different
slicknesses of rain,
The tantra that
prepares a body for
What lies ahead, even those who die
Alone
so none may track their spirit.
When skeletons
make love,
It can be a
subtle as a breeze,
As plain as two
geese gently
Gliding toward
one another
At red and
purple dusk
On a smooth
stretch of river,
As just as the
great works of humanitarians
Mingling with
the lowly and unsung,
Exploited,
wounded and pushed aside.
When skeletons
make love, it’s their way
Of saying to one
another I bow down
To you, you made
my life a living hell.
When skeletons
make love, they
Laugh at us
because they know
Everything’ll be
alright.
When skeletons
make love,
It’s only their
bones that are dead
And
scattered and behind them.
They can tell
it’s death if one of
Them is too solemn. Insecurity is another
Way they can
tell it’s death.
They cannot know
how they will
Wake or if
they’ll be there
When
they wake.
They cannot help
sharing what they
Had never shared
and what
They believed
could not be shared.
Neither are they
been diminished
By the
sharpening of the perceptions
They
have now, nor have
they sadness.
When skeletons
make love, it’s like
Coming around a
curve in a mountain
Road
and the road ahead not there.
When skeletons
make love, it is
As though they
were opening a big locked
Suitcase in
which a pile of stories
In a child’s
notebook had been written
And find the
stories gone and so
They lock the
suitcase again not believing
It could be
possible for the stories to
Have
vanished. It must be
some ghastly
Joke, but
unlocking the big suitcase
Once again they
check it and after
Locking it they
check again, knowing
That
they were destroyed.
When skeletons
make love, it’s as if
They are saying
there’s nothing to do,
But we’ll do it,
we’ll really do it.
They lay curled
up in each other as if
Two tusks left
during a rebellion on a trek across
A bitter, dry
lake against the rose brown
Early morning
color of the ground, lovely
For the
unbelievable smoothness of
Their bones as the light grows stronger.
When skeletons
make love, it is as
If they were
writing in the sand the stories
That they’d lost
just to write them down
And that even
though lost they could
Write them again
and again fully intact.
Not a sentence
was missing.
When they made
love, they would
Make love again,
and say to one another
But not aloud,
I’m with you, I’m your
Boy except when
I’m your girl,
Changing from a
girl into a boy
And back again,
chin up, nothing
Can stop that
and all the other
Loving decisions
that are so easy
To make when you
haven’t seen
How too many of
them can turn out.
I don’t know,
we’ll just be us, they say
When
skeletons make love.
I’m going to
make love to you forever,
They said at the
end, both dead
And empty, but
it was not over.
19 July-6 August
2006: Crestone,
Spoken word version from Homage.
Copyright © 2007 by Jim Cohn.
Text from Mantra Winds (Museum of American Poetics Publications).
Copyright © 2010 by Jim Cohn.