Salt, Coal

Rosalynde Vas Dias


 

Oh you turned. Didn't you?
Now when I think

I want to speak or to call—
I stay the tongue. I turn
and look at the dull pieces

scattered around. Organic.
Jet. Or moonstone. Or dull agate.
Whatever-the-fuck.

                        We will all be
at the bottom of the tar pit
until far galactic anthropologists
come and dust us off and try to make
sense of our huge Styrofoam messes.
                       You will be dead

before me and I will dream of fucking you.
And I will wake and you'll be dead. Boring.

Yawn. So I wish you dead. Dead air.
Dead skin. The stupid daily deadness—

an easy curse. It cannot fail.
The same deadness turns everyone I know
to pillars. Salt, coal. Who the hell

cares? It burns or melts or stays fucking
static and inert and stubborn

and persists. Let it stay
or burn. Let it burn or fall and stay

until the end of time. Let it have its way.
Its stupid way of persisting. Let

the far-off tentacled ones come and draw
on it with their markers, if they have such things,

or their shit, if they have that.