Skeleton City

Bled of colour, no birds singing,
stacked tenement ribs sucked of innards,
bleached open staircases searching for souls.

Empty sockets, eyeball blasted,
twisted metal like pelvic cradles, gender blurred

Bony joints, unused to air, fixed in arthritic contortion,
some splintered, surviving to point the finger.

Groaning vertebrae struggling still to support the spinal
threads lashing and sparking at the burnt smoke sky.

Words of ancestors cosseted in bodies built to teach
cratered and collapsed, crushed to dust,
concrete mingling with cadaver, knee deep.