An Uneasy Birth

Surrounded on all sides by ghosts Ghosts still becoming and ghosts returning And the ones that never left me. Time was, it seemed necessary To see the original ingredient in each day But it's getting harder to find recipes Too many years, too many changes Even the mirror harbors a fledgling phantom Bland eyes and parchment skin Too many rotations around the planet Gravity squats on everything after a while Greeting each successive season the same Whether harsh or benign Nothing new under the stars above, not anymore Under the flat emotion, an iron foundry bulges Bristles with new battlements Restraining concretions of sedimented layer More like a gravestone or monument on the surface now Lacking any utilitarian purpose; a precancerous thickening Under the veined marble plaster relief The worn pistons ever less elastic Static artifact of white noise. Disassembling a life takes so much Of the available time and energy Just when there's an excess of neither: A long labor just to expel the corpse.