POEM | EKPHRASTIC

Dead Poet Purgatory

Inspired by Paul Delvaux

Skeletons in an Office by Paul Delvaux, 1944. Image: Wikiart

I can’t lie in repose
with pallbearers of prose,
destined to decompose
in detention for the demoted,
dealt the demerits
of irrelevance, decaying
on pages with no end game.

Standing in the doorway
of dead poet purgatory
in the White Room,
drinking delusion
when demented diction’s
dismissed, closing the casket
on cryptic conviction,

gagging on gutter glitz
sticking to my ribs
of rattled recognition,
my shedded skin
snakes in the wind.

Somehow, I’m still breathing
basic baritone heartbeats,
beef picked from bones

where the shadows
run from themselves,

banned from bookshelves
of backward belonging,
and my only spine’s
a pedestal for my mind,
inside the contentious
hole of cutthroat,