Skull

SKULL
by Matthew Snee
Elated hours like hair being combed in a mirror. Pity me not — the knife is warm.
Cold spider, bucketfuls of cliffs: the tight throbbing fingers of the recurring disease, the prison world, detonating phantoms.
Her lovely voice: “Storms pass. So do I.” There is a window between you and me.
Pieces of a jail.
My skin can feel the pearly outlines of an unscripted tragedy. Cherry-colored shark.
That age is gone. He stole her away to tattered hills and hanging shores, bashful thoughts; singing adventure among the whirling apparitions of the heart’s ecstasy. She is lifted, free, gone, to the safe torture of great waves and edgeless nudity. Magic peach: Where is your toothed brain now?
Ashes linger. This poem of neon Venus and green Earth, by street or by field, flames in the moment like pallid lightning. And then it all flows back to the sea, intact, surrendering, lifted, free.
My vacation in reality includes drums, trumpets, and an audience. What an incredible waste.