this youth,
in a rush for some
more beauteous welt
adorns itself with scabs
so judiciously lathered
as to present the lie of a wound
that if curiously arranged,
if precociously prepared
like a cobra coiled over
a spine or a strangler fig
engaged with a femur
and buttoned with roses —
perhaps an eagle
shouldered in flight, may
in all their vain resplendence
inure it to the myriad
stabs and blisters that will,
loose and ideogrammatically
inclined, present an abstract
carved by a dog or
some other toothy thing
of a life written long
and with very little ease.
Image: Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash
Sweet and Bitter Greens 