Does memory deserve such a platter?
Cellophane instead of silver, but still
An impressive tower.

Such weight it bears—
Exhibit of blue curiosities
Resting on shoulders,

Original honeycombs.
The honeyeater feasts
On what has made a meal of me.

Grand rooms echo with silence.
Love turned to hate
So often without comment.

A history of broken hearts lies beneath
Street level. Away from sun’s glare
I buried them.

It is a tomb I walk in, tour guide
To myself. It is an ossuary hidden deep
Underground. It is the Catacombs of Paris.

Here moldering in the dark repose
A stack of secret skulls and bones—
Those gleeful arsonists.

In the end, even they succumbed
To the fires they set,
Burning down chapels without regret.

The city rumbles overhead, oblivious.
Everyone is absorbed with their own busyness.
No one pauses to wonder outside the still museum.

The cool façade belies the treasures hidden within.
They forget the history we share.
No visitor ascends the stair.

Inside, all is quiet.
The sole curator walks among the artifacts—
The rare objects, a Gordian knot,

The personas we once wore:
The naked emperor, the femme fatale,
The honeycunt.

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?

Afraid in the dark
Afraid all alone
Afraid you might die
In the catacombs

Afraid of the ghosts
Afraid of their moans
Afraid you might die
In the catacombs

Heart pounding faster
Already quite scared
Hands become sweaty
There's death in the air

The screams of the dead
Screech their eerie tones
Haunting the hallways
In the catacombs

Running down the halls
You try to escape
Searching the tunnels
The ground starts to quake

Ghostly hands reach up
They grab your one leg
Then dragging you down
As you scream and beg

Demons surrounds you
You claw at their bones
They drag you to hell
In the catacombs

Walking thru these lonely
corridors at night,
seeking some sense
and knowledge
to beam forth and
shine bright.

I look into your eyes
Mysticism at its best
If only we had a little longer
To rise and stand this test

This sentiment that burns deep within my bones
Leaving me voiceless
One among the drones

Tho they know,  deep down, which vices are my kin.
Please help me ,dear Lord,  to turn away from Sin.

So Dead do I turn to you amongst the flowers.
Please help me to turn and release myself from this prison.

This is ancient land, this is
       hallowed ground, this is
21 kilometers worth of tunnels.  

Blood stops flowing after death
                                                          becaus­e the heart is no longer beating;
no longer forcing blood to gush through veins and arteries and vessels.  
It gets lazy, becomes stagnant.  
Slowly slides down to the
                                               lowest point on the body; creates a
                                          reddish purple discoloration on the skin
similar to a bruise, but not quite the same thing.  

          This is what I imagine the fifth level of the catacombs to look like:
                                           a reddish purple discoloration
                                          spread across my mother’s back.  

This is what I see when I close my eyes and rub them a bit too hard for a bit too long.  This is what I see when I look into a hole in the stone walls that is big enough to fit an infant.  This is what I see in the reflection of the Trevi Fountain.  This is what I see when I try to remember the shape of my mother’s sleeping body as it curled in on itself on top of a flat hospital mattress.  

The color of death is not black, is not white.  The
color of death is the color of blood: the way it looks
through the skin after having
                                                       hours and
                                                                ­            days and
                                 weeks to
slowly slink down into the
lowest bend of the body.  

This is the reddish umbra of the earth that the
                                                                             eclipsed moon hides behind.  
This is my body given for you.  
Take and eat.  
                                                  Do this is the remembrance of
                                                                ­                                                me.

The water rises,
And I awaken in the dark of the tunnel stream.
The lights have vanished,
And my perception is lost.

As my eyes are open;
Home to view these ancient walls.
In paintings, I have only seen
These deathly catacomb halls.

My lights awaken,
The water shaken.
Gone are the hooded paintings; stolen
From the dephs of the catacomb halls.

From the doctrines of space and nature,
I paint the walls with answers
To guide the ancients who rebuilt the city.
Once more, the water rises.
One more, another body
To flow through the tunnel stream.

black cats under calico sky's
in catacombs.white out mask mirrored eyes
white owl massacre  night, leaving the bones
take off mask you are home
you live in your cave
escaping hoards of insane
is this all a dream
this cant be reality
its obscene,its us
its everything, passing fling
refrain from truly connecting
parting your society
collapsing into the sea
****** debauchery hearing screams
in the a trophy of atrophy
this is everything I am wanting, and yet nothing at all
its a quick trip to the bottom, but this time your on top again
ride the horses the moist rainy night
show me I am wrong
and prove your are right
so I may worship at your feet
and steal away the night

They lay on Normandy.
Two hundred miles away, the empty shells of humans
Who lie below the streets
Felt the poison that lurked above.

They shuffled out of the underground,
Boarding trains and ships like corpses
And dropping bombs from miles above.

A little French boy is spared.
His brother whispers “Bon courage,”
As the rest of the family are taken out back
And shot like mad dogs.

Twenty years later, he stands on the beach
With his young wife
Watching their sons roll and play in the sand.

His tongue tastes a warm salt
That couldn't come from the ocean.
All he can taste from the ocean is blood.

I can see my grandfather clearly
With tears falling down his face
As his mother shuts the piano.
“There will be no music,” she says quietly.

She is an immigrant
And I wonder if she questions the choice
That brought her son to a country where he might lay down his life
For strangers, four thousand miles away.

I can feel him now
Hiding in the apple trees,
High above the others.
He is in Sainte-Mère-Église, and there are enemies below.

And now I take them in my arms
Cradling them like children
“Je vous embrasse, les deux,”
And I lie down on the edge of the ocean at Normandy.

I exhale and hold them close.
The sun is shining, and I do not cry;
It is nothing but salt and water to me.