Hardening

The heart has wounds all around it.

Places where arrows once
tore and bloodied muscle.

They have healed since then,
turning gray-brown, flat
not giving or returning
when poked with a finger.

Some trees turn to stone.
A curious thing. They
just up and become some
other thing. They become
some thing else.

Pieces
of me have turned to stone.
The dead pieces.
Mostly the wounds
around the heart.

There are other place too,
just below my ass, where
I used to welt up after
a belting. That turned to
pine and then
to stone. My little toe
is still turning from wood
to stone. I don’t know why,
but it is all twisted - all
humped up. It is becoming
a statue.

At times
I feel the top of my
back - the field between
my shoulders - hunching up.
A swelling mountain
pushing through the skin.
That one I think I’ll stop.
But who knows.

Trees that turn to stone
are a curious thing.

The body has dead men
all around it. People who
have once lived,
or maybe not.

They walked with me
and I have spoken
with them, but the hollow
behind their eyes would
not let them raise a fist
and yell with me. They
softened. They became
jelly.

At some point,
when I was not looking -
or maybe I was -
the hand and the fist
crumbled, the jelly glued
shut the lid. No more air
could enter; and they
too were stone.

Can anything stop this
constant turning of things
into stone?

This turning to stone
is a curious thing.

Ciao!

+Tom