(For Beate)

It’s cold enough to make my breasts ache;
loomed over by arthritic joints
of rock, I gush breath through the
collars of my gloves, until my hands -
previously cold -
are now at least damp, as well.

I could murder with a thin blade.
I could pummel crevices of skull
with a sharp-edged stone.

Someone tore the earth in two
like bread broken at the table,
and this is the result:
The Alps.

And while I court row upon row
of scalps - some ragged -
others parted at their neck, and swept over
as a rising tide engulfs a rock-pool -
night after night;
their pallid faces
and stifled choking,
their heavy-lidded yellow eyes
peering towards a revelation:
I see the blood flown from their cheeks
where weaping’s prohibited;
The grating of lungs where laughter is stifled.

Others imagine them naked.

The applause could be a company of
country lads, nudging innocents into pits
with their rifles, barking.
The swish of curtain, fistfuls of lime
scattered over limbs.

Well. Let us kill anonymously.
None of the horrors,
the unnaturalness
of familiarity.

They leave to their couches,
and I to my cole cream.

Munich, tomorrow.

copyright,  © 2006 Moby Pomerance