Holding to the Bone

They say, "The flesh is weak, but the spirit is willing." The bone is immovable. When the talk turns frigid and brittle, I break off my words, indigestibly able to lacerate the throat and stomach when swallowed whole. This affair with anger pains the softer parts of me, the smooth, fleshy underside that flinches beneath the knife. So I hold to the bone. The marrow is a bitter meal, crystalline between my teeth; the shaft is steel... white with severity of purpose: REMAIN CONSTANT, STEADFAST, HABITUAL. (habit, you see, is the bone of perseverance... that is why we speak of "breaking" habits) The tender are always the first to go--- we roll them into tiny compliances, bricks to prop the infrastructure. They have not yet become addicted to the pain of standing erect. Homo Sapien, top-heavy with your sapience, crumpling with curvature-of-the-perseverance, your fractured habits are healing crooked. I can hear them grinding beneath the pale skin of your progress, and I know... I should have been born invertebrate