‘O, SKELETONS’
An Investigation Into What Lies Beneath Us All | april4.2025
Skeletons to the left of you
Skeletons to the right.
Skeletons drive your car to work
& then go dancing in the night.
O, skeletons, they’re just everywhere!
You only have to look around.
Skeletons right beneath your hair,
they hardly ever make a sound.
Many, many years ago,
a baby skeleton came out,
Quiet as a church mouse while
your flesh let out a shout.
Grew up to be an adolescent
Maybe you broke one of its bones.
But that’s the thing about a skeleton,
you’ll never hear them moan.
Skeletons on your death bed
aren’t so bugged by our demise.
Since skeletons last far longer, while
the rest of us just ups and dies.
O, skeletons, they’re just everywhere!
You only have to look around.
Skeletons right beneath your hair,
they hardly ever make a sound!
Say hello to a skeleton,
you won’t have to travel very far.
It’s sitting in your chair with you,
sips red wine at your favorite bar.
Skeletons to the left of you
Skeletons to the right.
Skeletons drive your car to work
& then go dancing in the night.
POETRY AFTERWORD
I have been poring through old notebooks and journals while working on a ‘sorta memoir’ project. I am wont to scribble snatches of lines of potential poems and possible songs and found this verse (above) from a notebook from the 1990s or early 21st century. Using this skeletonized snippet this morning, I elaborated on this notion of our friend, the skeleton, with whom we spend our lives without hardly giving them a thought, except when we break part of them or a surgery reveals our skeleton has been there all along. Then — the nerve of them — they exist FAR longer than our bodies will. As for the photos, I snapped them in a recent unrelated after-hours stroll through the University of Charleston in Charleston, WV, stumbling upon Professor Bones addressing a skeletal class. I am unsure if ‘O, SKELETONS’ will be both a song as I have written it above, with refrains, or a poem. I think it could work either way. Stay tuned for the tune version by free subscribing to this site.
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Fun. I was thinking while reading, "This sounds like lyrics to a song." You have time to get a Halloween hit out of it. I may be more attuned than somebody who never needed to think about bones. After breaking a femur and a hip-pinning I was impressed by the healing noticeable day-by-day. The joint wanted to be well as much as I wanted it to be.