Ecology

At some point you can no longer kill a part without killing the whole.

The body lies on the table, bright light

Casting cold shadows in the curves of its side

And glinting off clean steel corners.

Fingers hover over the body, which has been cut

Down the center and pulled apart like fruit,

Pinned like a sodden butterfly, and yet

It is still alive, still living and pulsing

Beneath the shadow of the fingers which hang

Hungrily above the muddled indigo-red

Mess. The fingers prod in the sloshing

Burgundy, fumbling between the stained 

White- brown walls. They point

And laugh a little. This �" they point again-

I don’t need this. What redundancy

Of design. What muddy mess -

Cut it out. And the flash of steel �"

Snick.

Some small mass is tossed aside, 

Thudding onto the cold table beneath the

Clean white light. It is purple, swollen

And still moving, still

Pulsing. The fingers wave this aside.

Phantoms of mud, they hiss,

We are done here.

A single filament lingers, strung

Between the body and the little thing,

And the fingers sever this with a sneer

As cold as steel. Now the little ugly thing lies dead 

Where it deserved - the fingers accused

It, like all the other little things. Time to go.

The flesh is gray, and the filament dangles, and yet 

A pulse still trickles 

Like dreams along yarn between tin cans

And the gray is seeping. Drip -

Drip -

Seeping back like brine

Up the thread, through the veins, sloshing

Between the swollen lace filaments

That the fingers can hardly feel

Racing like white in the wine, consuming, 

Surging like a river, pulsing like blood

From a wound, and suddenly

The fingers can touch it, the insidious

Gray. They grasp the knife, frantically

Slicing, but the colorless spills into the burgundy

Mess, washes it away to shining white, and the fingers

Touch the cathedral curves with dread 

As the deathly pallor scurries 

They dip into the darkling cavern, linger

On the exquisite blushing arcs �"

All the little ugly things they cut, they can see

Them now, or their memories,

Their dark caverns scoured and fading.

Of all the little things to die-

The bloody fingers falter, and tremble

As the gray seeps into them at last.

Time to go. 

Finally they fall still and cold

Like the little masses, like their body, 

Like the steel beneath their skin. 

Author's Note

I'm still working on revising this one, so any comments are really appreciated!

Reviews

[J.R.H.]

The imagery and diction were good in this, but I enjoyed you're choice of line breaks more than anything. Sometimes that's the most difficult part!

"The flesh is gray, and the filament dangles, and yet
A pulse still trickles
Like dreams along yarn between tin cans

And the gray is seeping. Drip -
Drip -
Seeping back like brine

Up the thread, through the veins, sloshing
Between the swollen lace filaments
That the fingers can hardly feel"

Those were my favorite three stanzas. Great job on the poem as a whole though! Thanks for the read!

[zombiebird]

Thanks for the comment! I'm glad you liked the line breaks; I tried to really use them in this poem to create meaning and rhythm. Thanks again :)

[J.R.H.]

no problem! And I think yove accomplished just that!