The Pulses
Inside the bone are thousands
of tiny caverns. Each one
winds through the needle
of the others; each one
draws through its darkness
walls curved with chalk
and ochre, all the skies
we will ever know, all
the faces that will yield
to our touch as each year
twines inside the next. Blood
layers the images we follow
to death; night after night
dream descends these corridors
to find the lovers we will
marry in the day. Our gods
twist against their demons
endlessly and await whatever
imprint of flesh we will grant
them in our lives. We conjure
from the black arts that line
all the narrow passageways
ourselves. We fill the hours
and the graves with our tracings,
skulls etched into the planets
and their crescents, skeletons to mar
the flat deliberations of the sun.