A mound of bone, a parliament of death,
where hollow eyes convene in silent court.
The skulls are piled like stones the river left
when it forgot the names it once had taught.
Cracked ivory domes, sun-bleached and parchment-thin,
bear fissures like old maps of vanished lands;
each suture tells of wind that wore them in,
of teeth that ground the dust between their hands.
Some grin with jagged tusks, a bestial jest,
their lower jaws unhinged in frozen screams;
others stare blank, the sockets deep as rest,
where maggots wove and unwove their dreams.
Black tendrils—roots or veins of midnight clay—
coil through the heap, a cursive of decay;
they knot the crania in a loose bouquet,
as if the earth would sign its work “obey.”
A child’s skull, small as a sparrow’s egg,
lies tilted on the rim, its milk-teeth gone;
beside it, giants leer with broken peg,
their orbits wide enough to swallow dawn.
No flesh, no banner, no heraldic crest—
only the chalky choir of what remains,
singing in cracked octaves of the chest
that once inhaled the smoke of funeral trains.
The light is low, a cellar’s sullen lamp;
it gilds the ridges, leaves the hollows black.
Each skull reflects a moon that never stamped
its face upon the sky, yet still looks back.
Here is the census of the unremembered,
the ledger kept in calcium and loss;
a pyramid of thought that time dismembered,
and gravity arranged without a cross.
Touch one: it powders at the fingertip,
a chalky ghost that stains the living skin.
Listen: the silence has a hollow drip,
the slow percussion of the world wearing thin.
This is the still-life of the final act,
where every face is turned to its own night;
the curtain falls, the audience intact,
and every seat is filled with second sight.
where hollow eyes convene in silent court.
The skulls are piled like stones the river left
when it forgot the names it once had taught.
Cracked ivory domes, sun-bleached and parchment-thin,
bear fissures like old maps of vanished lands;
each suture tells of wind that wore them in,
of teeth that ground the dust between their hands.
Some grin with jagged tusks, a bestial jest,
their lower jaws unhinged in frozen screams;
others stare blank, the sockets deep as rest,
where maggots wove and unwove their dreams.
Black tendrils—roots or veins of midnight clay—
coil through the heap, a cursive of decay;
they knot the crania in a loose bouquet,
as if the earth would sign its work “obey.”
A child’s skull, small as a sparrow’s egg,
lies tilted on the rim, its milk-teeth gone;
beside it, giants leer with broken peg,
their orbits wide enough to swallow dawn.
No flesh, no banner, no heraldic crest—
only the chalky choir of what remains,
singing in cracked octaves of the chest
that once inhaled the smoke of funeral trains.
The light is low, a cellar’s sullen lamp;
it gilds the ridges, leaves the hollows black.
Each skull reflects a moon that never stamped
its face upon the sky, yet still looks back.
Here is the census of the unremembered,
the ledger kept in calcium and loss;
a pyramid of thought that time dismembered,
and gravity arranged without a cross.
Touch one: it powders at the fingertip,
a chalky ghost that stains the living skin.
Listen: the silence has a hollow drip,
the slow percussion of the world wearing thin.
This is the still-life of the final act,
where every face is turned to its own night;
the curtain falls, the audience intact,
and every seat is filled with second sight.
The Sunday Circle