Mesopotamia

A man with no bones stalks in the desert.
He drags a long shadow, his marrow
sucked dry by the bald silhouette
of a skeletal vulture, Time
entombed in a pile of dust.

Dead fingers probe the vastness, waking
in an afterlife more bleak than before,
death upon death mistaken for life,
like stairs off these sunburnt cliffs,
engulfed in the pyre of burning air.

Chained to the withering wall, the man
with a ragged barbed beard buries his feet, steadying -
the earth shakes, quaking with fear, he, sinks
swallowed by the death mouth, the rats
converge, consume, leave a bloody trail
leading to the wet cave where the drowned men,

Play poker, echo, laugh and chew child's organs
dragging, dragging, drag their potbellied flesh engorged
intestines, from the charnel cave; swollen, blue
the blood waves break and locusts from the river bend
descend like pages from ancient volumes, burning

Beth Nahrain,
here is the pale flesh of the entombed masses,
here is,
your pound of flesh and blood
writhing in this fertile mud.