DOA in May

Public Domain, The Science of Life and Death in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

           Disconnect on arrival

to rights, be damned and dreaming

of erosion, cobbled together seconds

in fractured and illicit fields

of vision, you lie

in the pooled insurgent

crust of well-worn auspices

            Bleeding off, drawing down in

moments encryption,

flashing in pitch and fragmented

vision laid forth in infinite halves

of depth and of death

in breeding haze dimmed

and fading last rites

            Waking fucked-off and parched

in suspended animation bled

and crawl to whet the throat,

fixed in searing lines

all the way through this beaming

deliverance path of makeshift

and grave – you wait

            Informed in catatonic states

of chronic mass, absorbed through

surreally exposed grafts

coming down from wallowed

hallowed eulogies, gifted in tithes

rushing into the bloodstream

informing its finality

Matt Mauldin
5/2017
Santa Barbara, CA

Appears in Patterns of Reconciliation