Bends

I'm always wrong, in fact
have helped build pyramids
in honor of the Wrong gods,
soaked each million-pound stone
in the wrong kind of mortar
(mortar itself is wrong for things
so massive as to hold themselves
in place) before hefting its bulk
to a higher level. Each platform
is its own continent, Sub-Saharan
Pyramida, or Antpyramidica, or
Babylon or anguish, where odd
cultures—only odd to fingers whose
tips have never traced love
carved into sandstone
with a toothpick—have forged
their existences into private
stock markets based on
the value of a rhubarb, not
to be confused with rhubarb pie,
the idea of rhubarb, nor rhubarb's
sense of self-worth. I
want to live in sand
like a flea, scuttling
between a licking ocean
tongue and a coveting
sand womb, laying
eggs in places sea
turtles might find them,
that sharks in turn
might find the sea turtles,
that I by proxy might
finally be
shit into the void
floating in the void
incubated in the void
born at deep sea
where the current
of neon coral-speak
is so vague as to keep
even daylight from hanging
its cliché dogleg on everything
where the bends is another way
of saying STOP you're reaching
for the light too fast, where STOP
you must let your angelic body simply
float where the current resides
is another way of saying
the bends.

Copyright © 2008 Ron Paul Salutsky All rights reserved
from Colorado Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission