Ghosts – the flayed

Aching to be clothed

in warm flesh again,

feeling it tight and smooth

against muscle and bone.

Hating this cold nakedness,

exposed to the core.

Waiting beyond time

for another skin to slide across

this osseous frame,

liquid, soft and trembling,

smelling of sun,

a fitting sensuality

once so tenderly touched

by a lover’s hands.

 

It is desires such as these

that binds a spirit

to this physical plane

of sweat and body,

this glistening intimacy.

 

Under the chill September sun

I deadhead the hydrangeas

and geraniums with shining

secateurs.

The withered blossoms fall

into my hand

and soon enough the foliage

will follow, dropping,

brown and wrinkled

onto the palm of earth,

and the garden will become

a murmuration of skeletons

waiting for new growth

to golden on their surfaces.

 

It is not so easy to face

this bone racked spirit in my night.

Its rattling visage is not pretty

and its pleading cries

come howling through my dreams.

 

I peer beneath desires

it breathes,

beneath its mask of dying,

into an endless nightmare

of longing,

reaching to be whole again,

refusing to accept

the flaying of time,

the peeling away

of the surfaces of care,

layer by layer

until there is nowhere else to go

except the beauty of the armature

flying free, released.

 

And you, my haunting,

whipping my heart

with cold filaments of silence.

It hurts, but you are freed now

and covered

by the bleeding veils of love.

 

mixed media painting and poem by clinock