It is deeply beholden
to the unnatural vale
in which its slick murk
slowly congeals,
Drawn by time from
its disposable purpose
into a slow collapse
that laps the planet
like that inner skin
of an onion, the one somehow
browned within
the ball of white.
It's the mark
of the Anthropocene.
The rotting remains
of bones, stumps, and roots
that fell to be crushed
by pressure and time
Resurrected, no -
re-animated ... electrocuted
to twitch, lifeless within
life-taking without,
modern manufactured
to string the neck,
bag the face,
and clog the gut.
There was struggle
before the ghost gave up
and the bleached ball
fell silent again,
and in the midst
of a breathless, empty dream,
the old bones became
in an oily post-post-state
a slippery remnant,
a greasy smear in the sediment
wormed through
the remains
of a layer of masks.