When Skeletons Make Love Poem by Jim Cohn

After a meditation by Susannah Carleton

When skeletons make love,
Do they look into each other's eye
Sockets and see their own reflection?

Does the smell of cherry pie
Cooling by an open window
Remind them of red organs?

Do they exchange gifts of malas
Made of dried hair strung through
Cavities once filled with gold?

When skeletons make love,
Does it hurt the first time?
Do wives and husbands

Slowly wear each other down,
Grinding their love to a place
Where there is no bone?

Do they notice swooping bats,
Flying through their ribs
When they make love?

Do skeletons make love in an
Embrace that begins with the
Idea of my skull/your skull,

And ends not knowing whose
Skull is whose, and sometimes
With no skull at all,

Or with their lover's skull
Where their pelvis had been
And their pelvis where

Their lover's head once was?
Is this the essence of why they
Make love, these skeletons?

When skeletons make love,
Do they feel it is a piece of the
Old lost world returning?

Is it the part that is like running
Into one problem after another,
Buried in debt and broken

Machinery, body pains and
The ongoing anguish waiting to
Bring a person down

Or tangle them up?
When skeletons make love
Do they wish to be dead

Or just in bed, lights out,
Next to each other, panting,
Then relaxed breathing?

Does it matter that they are
Empty vessels of the evaporated
Fluids that contained them?

Do they receive food from
One another, only to ask,
"Where's the water?"

When skeletons make love,
It is as unavoidable as an extinct
Tree, a shoulder blade,

Summoned from another
Dimension- Boneholders,
Blessed with the world's trust.

When skeletons make love,
Do they see their jaw-words
As the antique discarding

Of the shaved dice of sex?
No more walking on top of this world
When skeletons make love.

I think of love as the child
Of skeletons the way a charnel
Ground must think about

The mystery of a world
Re-creating itself again and
Again as its offspring.

And what of those eagle claw
Fingers- what mesmerizes them
Now, when skeletons make love

To a sound like beer bottles
Across the river of pleasure's
Sharp and colorless touch?

When skeletons make love,
Do they wish they could take
Back every minute wasted

Under the tin-roof of precedent
Required to suddenly understand
Exactly how inseparable they'd been?

Because all things are beautiful
And subject to that which adorns,
When skeletons make love

Sometimes it is with coal dust
And ash that the scaffolding
Of humanity is cloaked,

Sometimes with starfish and
Sand dollars or strands of
Seagrass or halos of kelp,

Sometimes it is with crystal-wrapped
Femurs, sometimes quartz or bullets
Embedded in a spine,

Some skeletons come to one
Another with feathers or ribbons
Tied to bones, some lashed tight

With rope or barbed wire
Around neck vertebrae,
Some attach silver, rubies,

Turquoise or jade to their bones,
Weave garlands of fresh flowers
Or bits of cloth or brass bells,

Stamps, coins or fur, perfumed oils,
Arnica or candles that lit them
Up and attracted moths,

For there is nothing to resist once
The eroded heart is gone-
Having peeled through its skins,

Leaving sorrow and doubt like snakes
In the costume room of angels,
They are free to cross any distance

That alive, was only a reflection
Of the closeness surging between them
When skeletons make love.

This was an intimacy grown from
Death- for they had never entirely
Approved of being human

Nor grief's uncontrollably lonesome
Loss, its heavy and slow moonrises,
The coolness of tears.

They had forgotten to worry about
Fireballs of lightning striking them twice,
About pool table hid guns,

About the sadness of old things-
Beesmoke and all that goes awful
Wrong inside a person's head.

This one had to be right about
Everything. That one was a witch.
Many rolled out the rocks in

Their head as soon as trouble
Even suggested itself on the horizon.
They could not choose their dreams.

When skeletons make love,
They find ways without words
To describe the acute feeling

Of being chosen by a stranger,
Even after the funeral. Certain
Kinds of love you can't see,

Certain kinds of love require
The knowing strength of bone.
Certain kinds of love need

Exactly what you cannot give,
Certain kinds of love are nothing
More than not overdressed.

When skeletons make love, there is
No pride, too late for breakfast,
No insistent sordid quarrel,

No rudeness, shock, or blasphemy,
The monster they became.
The marrow of love is all there is,

Not the sense of one gradually has
Losing the ability to make out leaves,
The different slicknesses of rain,

The tantra that prepares a body for
What lies ahead, even those who die
Alone so none may track their spirit.

When skeletons make love,
It can be a subtle as a breeze,
As plain as two geese gently

Gliding toward one another
At red and purple dusk
On a smooth stretch of river,

As just as the great works of humanitarians
Mingling with the lowly and unsung,
Exploited, wounded and pushed aside.

When skeletons make love, it's their way
Of saying to one another I bow down
To you, you made my life a living hell.

When skeletons make love, they
Laugh at us because they know
Everything'll be alright.

When skeletons make love,
It's only their bones that are dead
And scattered and behind them.

They can tell it's death if one of
Them is too solemn. Insecurity is another
Way they can tell it's death.

They cannot know how they will
Wake or if they'll be there
When they wake.

They cannot help sharing what they
Had never shared and what
They believed could not be shared.

Neither are they diminished
By the sharpening of the perceptions
They have now, nor have they sadness.

When skeletons make love, it's like
Coming around a curve in a mountain
Road and the road ahead not there.

When skeletons make love, it is
As though they were opening a big locked
Suitcase in which a pile of stories

In a child's notebook had been written
And find the stories gone and so
They lock the suitcase again not believing

It could be possible for the stories to
Have vanished. It must be some ghastly
Joke, but unlocking the big suitcase

Once again they check it and after
Locking it they check again, knowing
That they were destroyed.

When skeletons make love, it's as if
They are saying there's nothing to do,
But we'll do it, we'll really do it.

They lay curled up in each other as if
Two tusks left during a rebellion on a trek across
A bitter, dry lake against the rose brown

Early morning color of the ground, lovely
For the unbelievable smoothness of
Their bones as the light grows stronger.

When skeletons make love, it is as
If they were writing in the sand the stories
That they'd lost just to write them down

And that even though lost they could
Write them again and again fully intact.
Not a sentence was missing.

When they made love, they would
Make love again, and say to one another
But not aloud, I'm with you, I'm your

Boy except when I'm your girl,
Changing from a girl into a boy
And back again, chin up, nothing

Can stop that and all the other
Loving decisions that are so easy
To make when you haven't seen

How too many of them can turn out.
I don't know, we'll just be us, they say
When skeletons make love.

I'm going to make love to you forever,
They said at the end, both dead
And empty, but it was not over.