gilt wood
oil on panel
a moment eternal
light plays with shadow
color quickens flesh
the face outlasts its maker
the dead regard us still
Hairs in the damndest places—
Sticking out of ears and nostrils,
Sprouting on shoulders too.
Yet suddenly sparse
Upon the summit
Where once the forest stood.
The trees that remain
Fade in color,
yet glisten pure and bright,
Catching light,
the darker growth once swallowed.
The forest thins.
The dome beneath
Opens to sky—
as if return to morning,
the bare crown
lifted toward first light.
The brevity of life catches one short of breath.
We thought there was time to inhale once more, only to discover a final exhalation.
Was it a dream, a hallucination, or merely the meeting of the circle?
Stars. Dust. Return.
The world turns gray, its vibrant colors gone,
Its proud cacophonies to whispers stilled.
The savor once so keen cannot hold on,
And fragrances that stirred the heart have spilled.
The warmth of living skin arrives more slow,
And textures once alive lie cool on hand.
What burned with presence not so long ago
Now asks of me a gentler way to stand.
Yet memory, though pale, returns to glow—
Not vivid now, but steady, like a coal
That long past flaming still holds heat below,
And warms the reaching fingers of the soul.
For sense may dim while seeing deepens still,
And what the body loses, mind may hold.
The slow recession works its quiet will:
Not poorer grown, but tempered and consoled.
“Dry bones can harm no one”—
So sang the voice from Wasteland’s shore,
But I have walked the killing fields
And know the lie that silence bore.
The bones do speak, though long decayed,
Unearthed by hands not theirs to claim,
Given tongues by zealot priests
Who mouth their prayers and speak their shame.
In Kosovo’s fields, in Gaza’s dust,
In Armenia’s buried grief,
Across the sands of Erbil’s night,
The dead are stirred—not for relief.
They rise not in their own defense,
They rise to justify the blade,
Embroidered with fresh fable-cloth,
With memories half-new, half-made.
The Promised Land is paved with skulls
That never sought a throne or crown.
The gospel of the grave is preached
In voices never theirs to claim.
The soul-stained call them forth once more—
These ventriloquists of vengeance
Make calcium speak of causes
The buried never chose to bless.
They cry for peace, yet hear their names
Proclaimed to summon death, not justice.
Their marrow plundered, their repose
Defiled while ancient wounds burn bright.
They do not ask to be avenged—
No whisper from the tomb requests
A mother’s tears be matched by some
New covenant of blood and fire.
Until we bury not just bone
But pride and myth and righteous sword,
The dead shall march in vengeful script
To scrawl our creeds in sacred dust.
Dry bones should harm no one—
Yet see how we conscript the dust,
Make weapons of our ancestors,
And brand our vengeance just.
