Monday, January 15, 2007

Ode to Toe Nails

Memes are all very well, but if you really want to know what I would say about clipping my toe nails:

Ode to My Toe Nails

O to be clipped and repentant,
groomed and discreet;

O to wander these rooms like a God
leaving crescent moons all over the furniture,
trailing chipped constellations on the carpeted night;

O to be free of the debris of living –
shedding hair, clothes, cuticle, Love –
everything bloodless and too soon outgrown;

O to believe in the smallness of sacrifice,
abandoning claws and the hardening of flesh,
growing the pain out, then cutting it away;

O to stare down at the provinces of my feet
watching them encroach on territories of emptiness
savage colonies of the body’s imperium;

O to be a farmer of the incidental,
gathering the fruits of my bitter harvest
from beneath society’s downtreading toe;

O not to fear the sound of Death’s clippers,
learn not to mourn these everyday losses,
the imagined hurt of what we had to let go.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

*bows*

Anonymous said...

You need to go for a pedicure :D
gg

Anonymous said...

Two lines -

"hair, clothes, cuticle, Love – / everything bloodless and too soon outgrown" & "learn not to mourn these everyday losses / the imagined hurt of what we had to let go" ... brilliant, but then adjectives fall short of what one feels. Ah well, nail-clipping is never going to be the same again.

The bit about a God leaving moons had me laughing though. Felt a little out of place when compared with the general tone of the post upon rereading.

More of your poetry please.

-RS

Anonymous said...

beautiful.

Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...

The act of cutting your nails has disturbed the last anon. deeply, apparently. May your nails rest in peace.