Catacombs are full of bones
snuggling in the disgrace of others.
Hipbones piled on top of skulls,
the absence of lower jaws
denying the departed a smile,
the eternal existential joke
of insulting the living
with the knowledge
of their ultimate end.

Femur, skull, femur skull
is the monotonous pattern
of the Paris catacombs.
Two hundred six reduced
to two, an afterthought,
ossein denied an ossuary,
even the unity of skeleton.

The Capuchin Crypts at least
grant a molecular dignity.  
The entrance mummies
are part of a gruesome holy décor
draped in the faux pas of passé styles,
yielding room after nauseating room
to the essential two of Paris,
femurs/skulls clustered
in paisley amoeba patterns
projecting snaking vertebrae
of dendrites, of life replicated
with the cross on the wall as
the ultimate center and end.

Did their former owners
know that death would
be the end of ****** control?
That for a ghastly and sacred art
they could be united forever
in indiscriminate unity
with their enemy or lover?
Would they have opted
for the grave knowing
that their ashes could
easily be blown into
the breeze that survives them?