May 15, 2007
I am your masterpiece in stone.
An age-old obsession shaped
with chisel, mallet and rasp
transforming beauty to flesh,
so that you may have me
dance on raised platforms
from sunup to sundown-
lost in city slum shadows of noon
and pyre-bright night markets,
face painted to hide alabaster
skin and cracked lips -
mended and broken several times,
providing the rouge used
to color the sunken cheeks
and pasted smiles I flash
devotees laying offerings
in a metal box at my feet,
forcing me to bend before
the bed that is your pedestal-
bowing beneath bones of men
to get my share of applause
you swore will earn me a husband,
head served on a silver platter,
blindfolded and bound to
a ritual of clamped mouths where
I am brought to my knees
to learn the face of every hard rock
thrown and embedded in my flesh,
mapping stone paths that will lead
to the temples that created me-
so that I may carve my name
on every post and lintel
until they finally crumble
into the dust that fills
my hollow structure.
An age-old obsession shaped
with chisel, mallet and rasp
transforming beauty to flesh,
so that you may have me
dance on raised platforms
from sunup to sundown-
lost in city slum shadows of noon
and pyre-bright night markets,
face painted to hide alabaster
skin and cracked lips -
mended and broken several times,
providing the rouge used
to color the sunken cheeks
and pasted smiles I flash
devotees laying offerings
in a metal box at my feet,
forcing me to bend before
the bed that is your pedestal-
bowing beneath bones of men
to get my share of applause
you swore will earn me a husband,
head served on a silver platter,
blindfolded and bound to
a ritual of clamped mouths where
I am brought to my knees
to learn the face of every hard rock
thrown and embedded in my flesh,
mapping stone paths that will lead
to the temples that created me-
so that I may carve my name
on every post and lintel
until they finally crumble
into the dust that fills
my hollow structure.
