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 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.
Jim Cohn 19 July-6 August 2006 |