I Had A Golden Ribcage

I will keep this poem simple
For all you poetic fools
I was somewhere in Africa
In a hotel without ghosts
Death looked down
From his balcony
He was cool, blue eyes, and bald
I stood beside a pool without water
Looking at him on the seventh floor
I had a hundred american dollars
And a book of american poems
He knew what I was looking for
I did not understand what he saw
Maybe he had a woman naked on his bed
Sipping her tea or sucking pomegranate seed
Behind me I knew was a continent
Full of assumption and age
About to be consumed by my own desire
To see where history started
(Yet I find myself becoming abstract)
I turned my vision from death
And turned it to the sky
The weavers were silent
The Stalks sat sighing on the roof
An iron bar that held up a burnt light
Was their perch
They did not have a master
Yet they knew that I was there
They knew the blood that was in me
Was tasty and full of spice
They knew my heart was traditional
And my ribcage made of gold
The pool was empty, cracked and faded
A puddle sat resigned on the bottom
Brown, then black, yet it reflected the blue sky
I imagined those who would have sat by its side
Big thighs naked to the sun
Cigarettes alight and condensation rolling
Then a visit to the room on the seventh floor
And I turned again to that balcony
Because history has eaten them all
I wasn't living with anyone then
And I had hair that curled over my ears
I was somewhere in Africa
Watching the turmoil within the face of Death
Not knowing to come and meet me
Or return to his room where a lady lay
Sipping tea or sucking the seed of the pomegranate


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