Love Poem: Blood, Flesh and Bones
Alwi Shatry Avatar
Written by: Alwi Shatry

Blood, Flesh and Bones

O, for thy blessed skin, draping thy torso
Radiating key images to beholder’s sight ‘n mind
Acuities thus forged, save for the blind
Launching love at first sight

Much like hair, eyes, nose, lips
Whose contours spark admiration, adoration
Forsaking traits of souls laying buried deep
Worthy of love ‘n awe for all eternity

For doth the skin ‘n exteriors
Not speak to us or those espying
Forcing choices ‘pon us
Via seeing, not feeling nor sensing?

Yet beneath them all lie our vitals
Blood all infusive, red for all
Raw flesh, in glistening pinks
White fat streaking ‘tween stacks of flesh

Deep lie the bones, white ‘n firm
Body’s scaffold, same for all
After death, remain for millennia, then some
Betraying neither clan, tribe nor race

Yet ‘tis the skin ‘n façades
That push us to love or scorn
Redeem or rebuke, reject or abet
Enacting blanket measures

Punishing for being ‘n traits inborn
They as choiceless as we, yet ‘tis bile we pick
For the power we have, the power they don’t
‘N all for traits no more ‘n skin deep

We speak of them in cursory tones
Yet ‘tis more ‘bout us bereft of epiphanies
Judging them as though we knew
Little did we know, ‘tis our souls we reprove

Yet beneath all anatomy, resides the unseen
Defining our humanity, our core
That amorphous, transcendent, colorless yet real
Soul, spirit, essence, kernel

Where love and pain vie, for the heart’s space
If life’s to have meaning ‘n gist
Must cleanse itself of all rancor
For love ‘n honor to prevail, our crux to occupy

Then gods we invoke
Of love we claim they be
But only us does s/he cherish
The rest can vanish or perish

‘Tis claimed hell awaits, those not of us
That gods will save us
Not them with skins to loathe
Gods that peep no deeper than our own eyes can

What’s honestly to be made of such gods?