Getting back to what I came here for . . .

My original intent with this blog was to post an original poem once or twice a week. The idea was that I would be motivated to write poetry more often because I'd have a place to share what I've written. I'd like to try it out for a couple of weeks and see how it goes.

I'll start with a poem I wrote three (or so) years ago. It's based on a very vivid dream I had. (I sometimes dream in allegory). It's probably a bit of a diversion from my usual approach to poetry, but I kind of like it. Hope it doesn't make you sick. Hope you still think I'm sane. Hope you thought I was sane to begin with. Here is goes:

The Offering

The kitchen drawer paring knife
with the bent tip
pierces the skin between
the long thin foot bones above the
second and third toes.
not a clean, smooth scalpel drawn line of blood
but a jagged, meat-torn window
to where the bones are.

That’s what I’m after:
The bones.

I remove them, one by one,
from the right foot
and pile them,
clean and white,
like kindling
on a clean white plate
with a chipped rim
carefully placed on a clean white cloth
with one frayed edge
at the head of the dining room table.

Thin, delicate, unbroken.

I harvest the bones to the ankle.
I pause.
Why am I doing this? I ask myself.
And I can’t recall.
I just know it must be done.

The newly emptied fleshy flap of skin
sags at an awkward angle
from my right ankle
as it rests on my left knee.

Enough, I say.
And it is enough.