---

George Lewis Avery

---

the madwoman, she has rid away
trailing dust
amid a landscape
of bleached bone
helmet and cloven skull
and scimitars, too new for rust

in study, i kneel upon my bended knee
nearby to some poor blokes polished dome
Yorick?
perhaps
once on a tyme
but, tomorrow a mouse will call it home

a splendid cranium, i think, one a poet must have borne
but whose countenance now betrays the horror unveiled
when the unwelcome worm
infiltrated his sedentary mind
and devoured the last vestibule of sentient thought
ah me! into that void, such things it yelled

as i loiter, my gaze goes farther afield
to where a skulking jackal looks to rob
seeking souviners
of dead poets
and the old wound
the one that never heals, begins to throb

i am alone...but no...pilgrims are returning from meccah
their wagons wheels making music, in kind
plodding ever so steadily
they will always come
i can hear them even now
bump and grind (bump and grind)

and i
i will leave to go fishin'

.oeg ©

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