I am simply a rough caretaker of my
Temple, vessle, canvas, corpse..
Whatever it may be
There is so much more than you can see
Too much if we were able to we'd be overwhelmed
Our eyes would probably burn out of our skulls
Because among the deamons we manage to see
Angels

Maybe men labored under a yellow sky
bent under barley sheaves they’d cut,
returned behind limestone walls and leaned
to splash water on each other at the well.

You can see its crumbling curve today, in one
city as old when Cheops' pyramid was built
as pyramids are to us right now.  
Jericho, not so far away from Egypt and,

our archaeologists tell us, likely really didn’t hear
the blare of Joshua’s trumpets shuddering down
old Canaan-cursed by-Noah, coaxing walls
to shudder, teeter, list from Israelite raids.

You see one barley-bearer shaking dry,
descend  stair-tunnels to his flat to kneel
before his hungry daughter, hungry wife,
waiting for evening’s barley bread to cool.

He joins as they resume their business of the day
to gently set the cowrie eyes in Grandma’s face,
two priests removed the rest of her last year,
but left the precious head to decompose at home
scented in the wall with sweet Netufian herbs,

And now the family gathers near small fire,
desert nightbreeze filtering through the cracks
tenderly to soften Mother’s bony head
with daubs of plaster re-create her nose,

and gaping eye sockets, softening too
those black orbits with white plaster.
Slowly her death’s head touched tenderly
by younger finger tips becomes
something like a human head again,

If not quite living, cowrie shells complete
this vision of a vacant queenly stare
befits a family shrine. When things are done,
small granddaughter now squeals with delight
her own dark eyes reflect the fire-light.

The crooked tooth was just a tooth
Which sat like a worn-down moth
It dreamed for a free-hug booth
Though it never managed to go on forth

The crooked tooth was just a tooth
Which waited like a crippled witch
And always wished for its tiptoe path
While it knew that was just myth

The crooked tooth was just a tooth
Yet it kept a daydream to breathe
And to have a sparkle bath
Drenched between life and death

The crooked tooth was just a tooth, though
Which cared only about its growth
And shall only be a single tooth
Which then stood still at the end of birth

The crooked tooth was just a tooth
And it stood alone among the row
Of skull preserved by merciful death
Unaware of the dreams it had dreamed

But,
Ah,
Yes,
Never mind that.

For the crooked tooth
Was just a tooth
A worn-down moth
A selfish tooth.

Solely roaming,
Solely flowing,
Slowly transcending,
Slowly ascending.

Where do those pretty wings belong?
On the sides of skulls.

Lifting our mind state,
Leading us
To the land of winged skulls.

There's a brain in a bowl who says so.

Only drifting
Behind gates with thee,
Receiving symbols.

Your eyes dilate,
Someone's head is hung over,
Bludgeoned by stones.

There's a brain in a bowl that says so.

Where do those pretty wings belong?
On the sides of skulls,

Lifting your mind state,
Leading you
To the land of winged skulls.

There's a brain in a bowl that says so.

(c) 2014 Brandon Antonio Smith

(Originally written 10/27/10
Revised 9/27/14)

I’m choking on a fistfull of bones.                   There’s a skull
hidden deep in the back of my closet,
maybe in the abyss beneath my mattress,
maybe lodged somewhere behind my bookshelf,
that reads aloud all my past regrets
like bedtime stories.

I found the dried up teeth of my grandmother
on my vanity and used them like dice.
There’s a rib from my great aunt that I use
as a clothes hanger dangling on a hook in my bathroom.

When I was little the playset in my backyard
looked like tomorrow,
but weathered down and rusted, it looks
        like a mausoleum.  

There is a lock of hair on my bedside table that
is not mine, but hers, and I can’t help but
wonder if she wants it back.  Does she want it back?

There’s nine-year-old smoke in my lungs and
five-year-old iron around my heart.
There’s a wishbone branded to my liver
to signify the what if? and a
skull branded onto my chest to
signify the what is.

I learned not to trust so fully the first time I
nearly drown and how to be independent the
first time I learned to swim.
I used to want to be a “daddy’s girl” until I
realized what that meant.  The roses he gave me
for graduation went headfirst into the trash.

I have many things left unsaid.