I could have gone to the cemetery,
or back to my high school lab,
find him lecturing from a podium,
bony finger raised,
demagogue of the dead.
I could break him down piece by piece,
cram him in a duffle,
a femur jutting the zipper.
Ignore the groan-
Skeletons are
by nature
never satisfied.

Instead I found myself
in the carnival lot,
The dog was long dead,
the sign kept guard.
Rusty rides slouched like tumbleweeds.
Cotton candy in memory-
blue tack crunching my teeth.
Lewd.

Skeletons fixed on poles,
spiked up through pelvis and spine.
Use ****.
Grip shoulders. twist. lift.
When one slid free,
he collapsed into my arms
all bone-light, lovely,
mine at last.

I just brought him home.
Sat at the kitchen table.
Named him Curly.
Zoom howled: WAG’s gone weird!
What’s his name? What’s his name?

His name is Curly,
I said, but I knew
his name was You.

We drink wine by the pool.
He never sips.
Sometimes I pour a second glass for the glint.
Sometimes he tells me Danny Elfman
wants to play his ribs like a xylophone.
Sometimes he sighs,
he hates Oingo Boingo.
I laugh. Obliging.
So do I.

When the wind kicks up
he smells of sugar and rust.
Sometimes he rattles the glassware.
Sometimes he won’t sit still.
Skeletons are
by nature
never satisfied.

I am not very good at saying no to people,
                              or at being firm and direct with my patients at work.  
           I am soft and mandible.  
           I tend to let people take advantage of me.  

My physical therapist says the people with the most problems
with their hips and backs are
                                                        the ones that can          
                                                        hardly bend at all or
                                                                                                 that can
                                       bend              too             much.

I am too flexible.  
                              So much so that it is hurting me.  
                                    I fold and I fold and I fold
                                               in on myself like origami and
                                      I let people do whatever they want.  
I can't remember if I've always been this way or not.  

Maybe it depends on how you look at it:  
The woman in the casket could either be sleeping or dead.  She could either be a stranger or my mother.  This could either be the bright, multi-color, kaleidoscopic shapes I see when I rub my eyes a bit too hard for a bit too long, or it could be the dull, grey morgue her body was wheeled down to after they tied the tag around her toe and zipped her into a white bag.  This could either hurt a lot or a little.  It depends on how much you let in.  How willing you are to bend to the emotional blow.  I could either stop writing about this or keep going, but it's been, what, nine years now, and I haven't been able to stop yet—
only able to bend and
                                          bend
                 ­                                      and
                                                                    bend
                                                                                    and

A morgue is an unhappy place regardless of time or place.
The somber few that haunt the halls often project the surroundings dreadfully.
While walking the gray tiled rooms it’s known too that we shall one day wear the toe tag.
But mortality gives way to reality and jobs are done with quiet respect for passed souls.

And then there’s the Juarez Morgue...
A hot July day and a drive through Mexican customs brought a meeting with police officials.
A body in their possession, they thought, would bring transportation home.
Calloused officials with shiny gold 45’s aglow, spoke rhythmic Spanish in their police code.

A “******,” said one and this should be fun a ride with those looking more like hit men.
A car loaded with “Madrinas,” in tow and AR 15’s laid in seats in a row.
How odd thought he in a land purportedly free and fright on passerby faces.
Cocky bravado speaking radio slang,
did drive towards the Juarez morgue.

A couple miles out a turn in and out did place them in a neighborhood quiet.
But a familiar smell in a nose did swell, and wonder of how that could be valid.
Putrefaction it was, the odor rose above as the children played gleefully nearby.
How could it be when he could not see the edifice emitting the smell?

A small octagon building, small air conditioners in four windows.
Could it be that this was the morgue?
The desert sun bright and heat overbearing.
My God this is a place of death among many living, what a fright!

The escorts did enter, the detective slowly met the front door.
He was quite pensive when sliding from light to the dark.
His eyes gone black his vision insufficient, as he started to be able to see.
A wet sounding step and a curious glance, did place his feet in crimson water.

Disbelief as the room came into focus, he saw well the visions of what belong in hell.
Bags of bones stacked they were, a femur and skull, the fully decomposed welcomed.
Four porcelain tables and bodies disabled lay upon with nary a stare.
Just shortly behind bodies piled feet high forget a tray or a gurney.

Overcome by it all he began to stall, and try to gather his thoughts.
Rank smell in his nose sent him scrambling for his cigar.
The smoke unable to cover what he did discover, his heart fell hard to his knees.

How inhuman it was to see rampant disregard for the dead.
No scalpels used to cut the Y,
a kitchen knife he could cry.
Sewed up a corpse, with rough twine of course, he regretted where he did stand.
His spine became metal his mind did reel and a new wrinkle appeared on his brow.

On some summer nights when heat fills the air, he does look up to the moon.
His mind travels back to the withering stacks, and the odor still gathers in his nose.
The years have passed by and he doesn’t know why, the memories will not fade.
Restless sleep, fallen heart, many more new wrinkles have taken there place.

A war there has broken out,
and factions viciously ****.
He can’t help but wonder what has happened in Juarez.
The tractors and the bodies they plow.
No building this time a long ditch in the ground scores of people pushed into a long trench.

He walks each day with what he has seen, which cannot be unseen.
Wrestling with himself in the bed, and covering his head.
The dead they do come to visit still.
The Morgue in Juarez left it’s print in the mind of a young fellow.

Indulge the last line if you have some spare time.  Dios bendiga los muertos de Juarez.

there is a tourniquet on his tongue.

he is a risqué bloke
with alkaloid fingers,
they are wearing
yellow asylum jackets
yet he calls me
mad-


emoiselle, his, in between the lines
he cuts with razorblades and mirrors.
i find myself in between legs
of a stanza (not standing),
pale femurs and inner thighs
french-kissing into
surpine ampersands
where the first word
is a proclaimed ugly disease    -- perhaps 'love.'
and the other, its escapade   -- perhaps 'tuberculosis.'
but i must be the period:
oxidised bones.  


within the eyes
of a stanza (still not standing)
abides no fancy lines
no avarice for contemplative meanings
there is but space and void
and i've filled his femur marrows
with metaphors
to the verge of the patella.
he writes poetry for me
with a needle
and an eight-ball.



there is a tourniquet on his tongue
and his spine fits my stocking


seamlessly.

I

Angry stupors succumb her sternum
                                          --battered cavities
                             and shoulder sockets.
   Mates with shotguns and pitchforks
           snapped femur bones holding to hope,
  cat nap toes struggling
                                            to climb the miserable

  The greatest beasts reverberate
                        --Fathom and Torrential/Alice & Skippy,
                                       & Orwell and Bukowski
   with pit mentality swarming
                            her literature
                            his neck.                   Never be the Republics.

     The wall is wood and bare. Ammonia wet seal--
              
            Alice, with her sweet, clawing voices sees
                          this escape is a prison.
        The dove sent to fetch Peace's growth
                  got stuck                                     in the chimney
                             that Skippy built with his stubbornness.

     Alice touches her tacked on remnants
                       --feeling the double home.
                                  Skippy stands still unless Alice calls
     for him
                  and he runs so fast with heart halves beating
                                                                ­       slow.

   *II

           Skippy looks down the abyss and sees Julius Caesar,
                    Cthulhu, and a black flag
     calling back for ceremony
                                 in honor of facilitating fear
                        holding tears
                                   and hugs with arms of falsehood.

    Providing bread for mothers and fathers,
            captors of our tables of silence.
       Fear--making dead witnesses into no soft music,

                                                         ­  no music.
                                                          ­       No,
                                                             ­  facilitators near the top.
                                              What the minds of men
                                                             ­                have done to him...

III

                            Wet paper skin,
                       flat screen canvases--cute satisfactions
                                  asked mean all the world
      but yet                                nothing              but petty questions
                                                       ­                              that break the camel's back.

   "Do I deserve to do this to you?" Skippy asks,
                  helping Alice remove her other lung.
   "Pages will tell babblers later
                           in history", Alice replies.                   Shrieking

    Skippy quarters Alice, the body, the organism's pillow
                    ink
                    oozes
        ­     and    
                             squirms.
Silence,
               as Skippy does the deed.
Wallowing
          back
into
           the
swamp
            of
obsessive
           perception,                        climatic disintergration
                                                 ­                   makes flint hit steel--making another heir
                                                            ­                                       in her litter. Her name is Pain.


IV

       Loving Alice
                           watches         as she falls,
                                                    crashe­s,
                                                and rises.
She smiles softly.


V


  softly with lips of jasmine, the butterfly conundrum is strapping
            fingers made of chalk and other media to
red bricks,
red bells,
it is but a ghost of a casket. She breathes in this casket--in the belly of a bell, she survives.

                                     It doesn't take her long
            to finish
                          what she has done
         --nails faded back to purple polish.

  Falling through her father's philosophy                         a ladder,
                                                         ­                                    a rope
                                         to strangle the blade of Lady Macbeth's sanity.
          Alice takes one last look
  under jasper eyelids--pulls the rope & becomes lactic.
                                                         ­              A motion film.

He was a West Virginia farm boy.
His name was Walton, Cpl. John.
I **** thee not; we called him John Boy.

Two bunks down from me
in a barracks at Fort sux Dix, NJ,
he would write poetry after lights out
by penlight. Drill Sergeants called him a *****
when one of the recruits hung a poem in the chow hall
that Boy had written about missing his little sister.

Boy could weave a line from Whitman
or Frost or Byron, even Emily
flawlessly into a conversation.
I would try hard as hell to keep a straight face.
Boy never cracked a smile. No one else ever caught on.
Funny as hell. And pretty **** cool.

Like during the class on E and E
when asked to summarize lessons learned.
"Resist much. Obey little, Drill Sergeant".
He earned a smoke break for that.

When asked where his home was during an inspection
by the company commander, Boy replied
"Perhaps it is everywhere-on water and land" or
"under the soles of your boots, Captain".  
That one got him two days KP.

Most famously, when asked how battles are lost he replied
"Battles are lost in the same spirit as which they are won, Drill Sergeant".
That one got a big Ooorah and earned him his corporal stripe.
Drill Sergeant wasn't sure what he meant, but liked the sound of it.

We were stationed together for almost two years, Boy and I.
We deployed together. He would scribble by penlight in the bunker,
then scramble across the sand and call in close-air, then back to the poem
while the ground was still shaking, constantly blowing sand off of his journal.

Boy was hit in the left femur by a ****** round one night
while calling artillery coordinates down range.
He always left his field book in his sleeping bag.
I looked through it before it was gathered up
with the rest of his gear for shipping over to Ramstein.

Eighty-three pages of ******* awesome poetry about his daddy's farm,
his grandfather's mountain home, the snowy woods during deer season,
the first girl he loved, dogwoods in bloom, his mother's death in an auto accident.
A beagle pup that he once had.

Boy went home to West Virginia with one less leg.
I called him one Christmas a few years ago
after finding his phone number through a mutual friend.
We shot the usual ****. We were both a little drunk.
I asked Boy if he still wrote poetry. He said no,
he didn't have time with all the ***** that needed drinking.
Not much left to write about, he said. Anyway, poetry's for sissies.

r ~ 5/17/14

if we must die,
let it be known that
you're only as great as yesterday lets you.
that the leader of men carries the hope of all men.
that the world is never the final destination of life.
that man is only a photograph of heaven.

if we must die.
let it be known that eternity lives in every face.
that the mind is all but a femur of the unspoken soul.
that you are only a footstep ---
and every footstep must wash so to leave room for other footsteps.

since we must all die,
let it be known that you once stood--

let that be known.

Some things I cannot resist; I blame my own self worth.
I got shot in a dream once...it didn't hurt.
The apple is never as sweet
as the whispered words that slither out of your mouth.

Still moonstruck, still insane,
You throw me straight into the flame.,
and I like the burn
enough to go back for seconds.

Because even though I don't owe you anything,
I feel an obligation, like muscle memory
it falls out my open mouth, gasping
to remember the last few fragments
of the nightmare you woke me from.

So here's to biting off more than you can chew,
and having no regrets about finding yourself
cracked beneath the covers, and disarrayed
among the reflections of mistakes already made.

Maybe I needed this
reality check. I'm on my own, I know.
The temporal frustrates me, the birds
fly south for the winter, I fly...nowhere.
Permanence is a dream as fleeting as
its own contradiction.
It makes no sense, but what did I
expect from you?

Do you remember the nights
we laid across each others ankles
to see if either would break under
the weight of the other?

These fractured bones
don't mean a thing. (promise)

disconnected daydreamer,
party lights and streamers,
blockin' out the screamers,
grasping onto my femur.
i'm really real,
still alive & kickin'
not eatin' chicken
i'm strong as steel.

Revenge for her parents death the drive
that became her passion.
The story began when she was a child
witnessing their killing!
Every detail taken in by her big eyes
to get the killer the prize.

Seventeen years painfully trickled by her
becoming an assassin.
As the hatred coursed through her veins
revenge drove her on.
Though wanting to seek the love she craved
retribution on her soul engraved!

She had found a man making it complicated
her fine tuning distorted.
This new friend had found her mobile phone
saving her photo image.
Trying to find out about this mystery female
allowing others to find her trail.

Gangs had lost foot soldiers to her expertise
who acted like a shadow.
For the first time had to be far more aware
her parents murderer alerted.
The last pages of her diary soon completed
could this evil be defeated?

Knowing he would catch up with her soon
she prepared to strike first.
Entering his mansion in a covert manner
dispatching silently his crew.
Until he was there without support alone
recognising his arrogant tone.

From a hidden point confronted head on
glaring with a cold stare.
Going to fire the gun held in sweaty hand
diving found a hidden weapon.
A bullet went right through her shoulder
he was quick though much older.

Her shot caught him in a main thigh artery
shattering the femur to.
There before her the man she hated so much
was now at her mercy.
She had prayed for years to see him die
openly then did she cry!

One more deep breath she shot him in the head
cruelly on his face a smile as he lay dead!

Knowing she would be a target vanished from sight
revenge in the end did not feel right!

The Foureyed Poet.

straight through my spine the desert winds blow flute,
before my burial under the sand,
my skull an empty can, whistle and hoot,
my ribs a xylophone, femur in hand,

the dissonant cacophany--my taps,
a song for funerals devoid of men,
the vultures took my flesh in neat-sized scraps,
efficiently disposed in nature's den,

oh, once a garden, lush with greenery,
our love, abandoned by my rib's dear Eve,
now with her heart removed, the scenery
decayed, and to the burning sand i cleave,

my covering completes with eve's new dusk,
out of her sight, this old forgotten husk

(C)2012, Christos Rigakos

In eighty four,
when I was eighteen.
I joined the Navy,
so proud and so lean.

First day aboard,
my ship I laid footed.
An accident happened,
this guy was beheaded.

I witnessed it all,
a faint scream, now gone.
Blood everywhere,
I was shocked in stone.

Life is but different,
floating on the sea.
But darkness still lurks,
coming out of the deep.

They called it traditions,
it brought back my past.
The name callings, the torture,
How long will it last?

Hours turns days,
days into years.
Counting my time,
holding back tears.

We had risen the Shield,
another accident happened,
lost twenty one shipmates,
Never forgotten.

At one in the 'morn,
the ferry went down.
In the Bay of Haifa,
twenty one did drown.

They finally came home,
in a flag draped box,
Hearing taps on corner,
Home but not lost.

My demons continue,
to many deaf ear,
bring sadness and sorrow,
bring heartache and tears

One final vision,
that I can not erase.
my friend screamed horror
and the look on his face

The wheel of an aircraft,
rolled over his femur,
crushing and smashing,
Lost in a fever.

Blood and bones,
I'll never forget.
His piercing screams,
still gets me upset.

Twenty long years,
I lived on the sea.
Lost many great men
and their pain is still with me.

Onto my next step,
But what do I do?
These demons keep chasing me,
Can I **** them off too?

A famous "Barry Hodges" poem!

I was strolling along the Normandy beaches
In the close vicinity of Caen one day
With a very tasty piece of arm-candy to hand
When I found a bleached human femur on the beach.
Oh dear me, what thoughts this conjured up in my brain
As I imagined whose bone it might have been!
Perhaps some pathetic soldier boy landing in forty-four
Who got slotted by a gallant German gunner,
His eyes feasting on the sacrificial cannon fodder
So foolishly supplied for his target practice.

Then, as I grabbed my lady friend's juicy ****,
Causing her to turn and sink her tongue into my earhole,
We sank onto the sands in order to sate our lusts,
(enflamed by a very delicious meal of *moules marinières
and a bucket or two of well-chilled Muscadet sur Lie)
I thought, what the **** does it all matter?
This is now, and that was then, and this old world
Has become a much nicer place nowadays;
But how mistaken I was in that fond thought;
Oh what an idealist I am in a world of woe.

For, all of a sudden, a contingent of fat dwarfs appeared,
Totally naked apart from their luminous Uncle Sam hats
And the Stars and Stripes hanging from their arseholes;
How I marvelled at their disgusting shapes
(and how surprised was I to find their genitals
were of normal measurements and thus
rather intrusively large by comparison
with the rest of their miniature bodies).
O dear Lord and alleged Father of Mankind
Forgive their horrid ways verily and forsooth.

With a whoop, those demented military retards, [see note below]
The famous 118th battalion ****** Marine veterans,
A contingent of whom emerged from a portable toilet
(which must have been a bit of a tight squeeze),
Chopped my girl-friend up with their bayonets,
Whereupon I crapped myself in terror and pity,
Before retrieving the purse from the eviscerated corpse,
Realizing that her PIN number was still useable
Until 'les flics' discovered her unfortunate remains
After the shore ***** had partaken thereof.

'Tis heartbreaking to see you marvel so at children's play.
Do you not remember that you were once a child?
Have you lost the sweet ring-a-ding-dings of fairytale teachings?
Each day you fall further into The Man
And away from Peter Pan, Sara Crewe, Alice, and The Great Baron Munchausen himself.
I have not forgotten the road to where they go.
Begin where you are,
Sitting mundane, in your realm of logic and laws, tasteless office cubicle.
Now close your eyes and count to ten!
One Mississippi, two Mississippi...
When your eyes creak open you'll have to think fast!
You've no weapon against that smelly pirate with his dagger to your throat!
Give a good kick and a hard shove and you'll see the blade has changed hands, AVAST!
One good ****** and you slice through his thieving guts like butter!
Abandon ship! And SPLASH! into a garden surrounded by stone.
All you've to do is turn your head to see the peonies, the morning glories, the honeysuckle dripping in dew.
Now straighten up and grab hold of your bearings; that's it!
What was that?!
It blew by you, fast as lightning and just as bright.
A fairy! It must have been!
You run off after it but your foot catches a mangled root and you
SLAM! Face first into...WHAT IS THAT?!
Bones?! Now scramble to your feet and dash to the opening of the damp cave,
Round the corner and AH! crash into a giant gray ogre! GRRAAAGGHGHH!
Quick! Pick up that femur at your feet and pitch it into his eye! Ha! You big brute!
Duck between his great tree trunk legs and RRRRRIIIINNNNGGGG!
There goes the office phone.
But you're still out of breath and desperate for more.
Silly, don't you know? It's not something I can teach you.
You just have to REMEMBER.

Before air became gas
And water waste;
Before light became lasers
And fireworks cannons;
Before cars got wings
And trucks got tracks;
Before rafts were raiding ships
And we breathed underwater;
Before sticks were arrows and spears
And we exalted ourselves;
Before Empires rose and fell
And rose and fell,
A femur crushed Cro magnon's skull.
It's a marvel
How any of us
Are here
At all.

My tongue is leathered
vvith glory
an oral  j  u m  p   r o p e
            in the darkness!

Joy!!!
might you trip
&& break a femur
to make a meal of yourself?

Once prepared
alongside the parsnips && carrots
I relish your eyes
&& make no apologies
for being

Don't be sad
to be svvallowed
Some
are not as lucky

I was there the day the sun
was a ****** embryo & you
finally awoke under sick blue
                                                mist.  

Do you recall when Nell’s femur
fractured  and she cried the way a cow
bawls  when it is realized the calf will be
                                  someone’s veal dinner.  

Do you think of these times
or has a lardy mealworm crawled within
your nasal cavity & inched into your brain
                                             to erase memories?

Gathering atop our 100 year old
dogwood, blackbirds beckon you daily
to return  to your home  of devastating
                                                              trauma.

A pocket of dreams
A locket of screams
A whole ******* feeling tattooed in inseams
A machine of emotion
Run on ******* and devotion
A potion of souls smoked up through bowls
Blasted through time and spines
Cranial cavities and eyes
Children's cries fuel the high
Seeping through femur bones and tailored suits
This suit isn't suited for those who weep,
Just those who keep up with underworld Joneses
Who revel in dark tones and
Worship the devil

rooster crow.
goat horns clash.
sudden sutured glow
for what is left

of
this

soul,

comes forward
into thought.

soon i'll know
what it feels like to find roots;
or i won't,

idk.

afternoon slow
blue sky flies
off the tips of treetops;
old-growths,
ancienter than dragon bone femur,
scraping aged skylines.

im

earthing
in
my
mind.

We’re the salty dogs of mo-der-ni-ty,
Robot starfish programmed so expertly
(And we’d like to state most em-phat-ic-ly
There’s no cannibalism in the Royal Navy.)

As we sail the blue waters virtually,
There’s a thigh for you and a femur for me
(Just a wee little joke, as you can plainly see;
There’s no cannibalism in the Royal Navy.)

We sing along to Yanni and John Tesh
Though we’d prefer to have them in the flesh
(It’s their haunting tunes we find quite tasty;
There’s no cannibalism in the Royal Navy.)

We serve the nation and prove our worth,
Map the sewers of Brixton, gnaw on Colin Firth
(He treads the boards in-spi-ray-shun-ly;
There’s no cannibalism in the Royal Navy.)

When our duty’s done and the day is through
We have a most proper naval bar-be-cue
(Though we replace officers most fre-quent-ly
There’s no cannibalism in the Royal Navy.)

I sleep.
Hanging.
From a chan.
Delier.

I ***
To the chorus
Of fornicate
Voices

I pose
myself
At the mannequins
Femur

I sit
Inside
The emp.
Ty mall.

And watch
You ****
And slip.
It all.

Away.

sternum (n.)
a bone extending along the middle line of the ventral portion of the body consisting of a flat, narrow bone connected with the clavicles and the true ribs.
I remember taking an anatomy class in high school, we had to memorize the bones of the body - the skeletal system. Scapula, humerus, mandible all favorable to the tongue, but I never liked the word sternum, it sounds far too angry, nothing like the supple it actually is. Years later I would still find myself walking to work and naming them off. Bones on my mind. Tibia, ulna, femur, breastbone.
Breastbone rolls around my mouth, lulls my anxiety towards its twin like a boat in calm waters. I think of your breastbone as a platform to profess my fascination. I am surprisingly amazed every time I count the steady rhythm of your heart, it's sound conducted as though your breastbone is a soundboard. I feel the slight ridges of your ribs when my head lays in the valley of your chest. There's not a day that I wouldn't love to get lost in the formations of your bones, each crevice a new place to hide - lounging in the curve of your collar bone, plucking the muscles of your fingers like guitar strings, getting lost to the soft scent of skin, and memorizing the plush roundness of your *******, each sensation leaves me with a new obsession. I look for replicas in everyday life, the hunt almost as intoxicating as smoke from campfires, or plucking wishbones from hens.

I do not know what become of
Frank’s biological right leg,

whether it was severed
and incinerated or he

was born with only one
and crutch bound until

fitted with his first
artificial leg.

I  do understand the look on
on his face after he unlocks

the prosthetic from his
femur and massages

the foot pain on
his stump.

Slop
in the trough.
Poison cough.
Shattered femur.
No dreamer.
In a world of crime
It is
Time

I burnt my hand on the laminator.
You laughed, and continued to talk about tannins,
Drinkable leather,
Even though I couldn't smell them
Over the tobacco from your clothes
That slowly seeps into mine.

I'd come outside with you for a cigarette
A compliment,  maybe not to my lungs,
But I don't mind letting my battered bronchus
Take one more hit so I can laugh with you
About the sommelier placing the wrong cutlery on the table.

I have to keep up
Sharpen my tongue, mind, wit.
More so than those blunt scissors
Which crawled through parchment and maroon ink,
Mimiking the nice red from Chile it described,
Goes well with fish.

I can't imagine you crying,
Though I'm sure you did.
Turning away the sellotape-scarred wooden desk,
Blistered from years of frantic Christmas present wrapping.

Your walk, a sound only comparable to
A bold child clambering up the stairs to bed,
A heavy, determined, "I'm fine" step,
All femur.

Out to the tiny garden, more butts form compost for your vintry.
Only there would you let yourself search,
Rustling through your handbag, past papers and lighters,
For a scrunched up tissue.