death is up for interpretation
my soul squandered in a grave

your bones rattling in an October
mansion accompanied by screams

my identity emptied like a hypodermic
needle flushed into subcutaneous flesh

your self excised in flagellation
skin flayed like an orange excoriated

or maybe in death we find lost love
our temporal egos shed naked from

femur to fibula scapula to sacroiliac
earthly degradation removed like tongues

dissolved lies no longer spoken our brain pans
empty as books without words so the essence

of emotion can emerge in rhythmic script
or death allows for uninhibited orgies in

Dante’s second circle our bones playing like
tempanis wind blowing through our marrow

in devil’s horns perhaps the sacrament of denied
sentience sins expiated to become one who believes

in afterlife. No. Bones can reject death’s pride.
Bones can embrace sacrilege to fear no evil.

Internment, worms, charring?  Use my ashes instead
to paint a composed still life in vibrant gray.

Steve Gerson writes poetry and flash about life’s dissonance. He has published in CafeLit, Panoplyzine, Crack the Spine, Decadent Review, Vermilion, In Parentheses, Wingless Dreamer, Big Bend Literary Magazine, Coffin Bel, and more, plus his six chapbooks Once Planed Straight; Viral; And the Land Dreams Darkly; The 13th Floor: Step into Anxiety, What Is Isn’t, and There Is a Season.