Water you crave water
membranes thicken
the ravening mouth
you’re coming down
with something
can a face hurt?
your face hurts
and teeth,
teeth hurt
but never like this
tongue’s bunched,
shoulders ratchet
pain
there’s no turning back
the more stone-like
this body that is not you
the greater the agony
you would resolve this
paradox but not now
now is no time for musing
the joints
with instinctive wisdom
contract,
set for impact
skin thickens, has to,
itself is all the armor it has
liver hardens, lungs
crumple, papery
who puts a hand
on your bared chest
feels the death
crinkling under it
what’s left of heart
arcane machinery, pumps
incomprehensible fluid
to no end
primeval organs
are last to go,
the digestive tract
intestines
genitalia
the moistness of future
turned off
like a faucet
now you are petrified,
you have survived
it is your destiny
to be shut up alive
you are your own
headstone: struck dumb
in this headstone dump
of leanings and crumblings
coming to nothing
you can still hear them, the silences
stone histories
stone schools
stone freedoms
stone laws
stone soldiers
stone news
stone this
stone that
everywhere
the silences
of stones that die
hurtling through space
—from Angel in Flames, 1975