~From “Thanatos, in Textures” — Part 3:

WATCHERS

Where you grow weary,
we grow strong;
along the watchtower,
the poet, thief, the divisor of deeds
keeps watch with hawk-eyes
and talons that will rip the candy-coat
from your eyes, shredding
the shrapnel that’s keeping you blind.
Incinerating shellac, you might —
(if you don’t shy away from the bald, new
look shining out from your eyes now), —
capture the brave, lit allure of knowing
things you never considered before.

It is good, it is old, it is young,
it is reason without need to justify
or fabricate, or hold high in a fist against the sky.
It is being in this place,
at this time, in the better hearts
of our imaginings, bolder than the
shadows who lurk in the corners 
but do not tell.

We are the bony beasts de facto in
your heads, convincing you of your reality
in the refuge of your own existence.

Grey water murky,
falling from the sky
and, rising from the whirlpool at your feet,
reflects the opaque depths of our eyes—
eyes the size of pewter coins
and just as weighted.
Webbed with dust and ash,
the wind, sharp as whiskey
and twice as fierce,
flagellates the ground till it is bald
and fruitless.
Nearest the place we hold our council.—

We hold it close…
in the idealists’ utopia tessellated
in your fingers’ prints.
We hold it until we can extract slivers from
the tips of your prints without erasing anything but
your identity.
Without a hint, we take on your face,
become metaphors of you —
and you,
and you.
Until we slip your skins off to
walk free in the moonlight, or starlit dark
and look for new skins to make our own,
leaving yours disinterred in the
soil at our feet,
leftover, discarded,
unknown.

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