Before the rhytidectomy

[media-credit name=”Oli Lee” align=”alignnone” width=”640″][/media-credit]
Assuage their vanity with tools of
rhetoric and anything
they pay to hear; sacrifice
the flesh as a halal butcher
hangs carcasses
to a commercial god.

They do not value their mortality
and so their bodies become
medical: sutured, scarred,
lacerated, stained and
discarded once there are no more tricks
of flesh
to staunch the flow of imminent
obscenity.

The pitch: What you want, really want
to be: chameleon to please whomever
is expedient, whatever time
and cost
if you can improve your fragile fiction.

View your value through the incision: the image of
your empty eyes reflected in another gaze
to mold,
to manipulate
in faulty vision.

The human body is not a temple
but an outhouse;
not formed from clay by hand of god but
from cheap silly putty (™)
to be stretched like
truth.

You want to talk about soul; you are a skeleton
to be dressed in easily crafted
skeins of bandages and cast
away. This is why you pay

such prices. You will not see:
You will wither like all
living things, and you will curse the hands
that granted you your wish, as if they
could weave lengthier your thread
of life, like a Norn forgetful. No
more records. No more desire. No more
destiny but the death this Hippocratic
faith denied so long ago. And,

in your dust, the sigils of an ungodly
hand traced, relics of your immolation,
then cosmic boredom while the world
still spins.

Next!
***

Categories Poetry

Omar Willey was born at St. Frances Cabrini Hospital in Seattle and grew up near Lucky Market on Beacon Avenue. He believes Seattle is the greatest city on Earth and came to this conclusion by travelling much of the Earth. He is a junior member of Lesser Seattle and, as an oboist, does not blow his own trumpet. Contact him at omar [at] seattlestar [dot] net

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