Bone couplets
When martial arts lunges are dance steps,
and water sleeves, swift swords;
when he lifts himself to a straight line on a forefinger,
is it the stroke-art of bone calligraphy?
* * *
Bonelines
Inspired by a charcoal etching, “Two Malarias and a Cholera,” by Ray Parkins, Changi Museum, Singapore
Our lives,
now etched emblematic
as charcoal art on an island small
(insular while international).
Would I guess
our black white skeletons,
bones between life and death
on the Thai-Burma Railway
would make it across
to this end,
while living a past—black white lines like
black white history—in newsprint and textbooks.
Bone beauty now
in the spaces between
lines and curves on pillars, walls
of a small museum,
our backs to you,
how do you see my choking within
tasting so the cords of blood
singing hymns of life
while dying?