These cobbled streets contain all that is lost from the world
Between their cracks. There’s an avalanche
Waiting to begin under each and every speckled gravestone,
To be set into motion by a tourist’s stray toe.
Think of the creatures living beneath your feet,
The malleable soil soft as sugar under their patty legs
And the crusty remains of the family bones
Mixed in amongst the rubble.
The kingdom in which insects make their home
Is the most wondrous kingdom of all.
There is no delusion, and most of all no succumbing
To the social pressures we humans create.
An insect does not try to squeeze its thorax into a corset
Too small to contain its ribs,
Nor do they worry themselves
With the unmentionable subject
Of weight.
They are content masses under their skins,
Not wishing to shed them,
As snakes or humans strive to do;
To switch their cells around
To make a painting out of plasma
And the very marrow of one’s bones
Simply for a critic to look at it and say
That they have found true beauty here,
Lying silently in a cold, cold grave.
We all end up under those cobblestones eventually,
Sticks and stones will break our bones
Before our words can begin to desert us.
We become the earth in the heart of this Earth
And from our earthen backs, our powdered bones
Support the roots of the towering trees.
Candleships 