The Soul of the World

A crime has been committed
and no one noticed.
A dismembered body decays in a dumpster,
butchered and chopped into bits
like a side of beef.
One of mother earth's miracles
discarded and forgotten
like yesterday's refuse.
And like a ghost waking up
to the passage of time,
I realize that the body in the dumpster
is my own.

The whole world is an abandoned child,
huddled by the side of the road,
shell-shocked and freezing.
The sweet milk has curdled and
still we cling to the torn and filthy blanket.
All you lost and grieving orphans
with your steamroller-squashed hearts;
All you cracked and broken Kens and Barbies
walking around with severed limbs
and held together with chewing gum
and paper clips;
All you walking-dead men and women,
sweetly avoiding one another,
holding your Vogue and GQ masks
in front of your faces like Greek actors,
and reciting edited lines you never wrote;
I want to gather you up and hold you
until you feel safe again,
sing you a lullabye,
and keep you wrapped and warm
until you know that you are loved.

Then maybe I'll believe it myself.
Maybe I'll be able to pick the bloody chunks
from the garbage
and stitch them back together
like Isis and Osiris.
And then I'll dance like
crazy, psychedelic, Jackson Pollock spin-art.
I'll taste the 900 flavors of love
on the fertile breeze.
Twilight will reveal me as a child
and I'll breathe in the soul of the world.

David Aronson
January 2006