The Invention of Death

Hands placed on the soft
Deep damp down,
A crackling fist
Full of his grey air,
A cracked tongue
Empty with his silent voice.

Arms give no more resistance,
No push against
The sky to fill
The blood with the secrets
Of regretted lives and lived regrets
And air caught in pools.

Hands pulled up and out
On the human exposed
Back to his invertebrate,
To his inhuman before
The invention of death,
Before before and after.