WARD KELLEY
Ka Inside a Pyramid

from Histories of Souls

My heart floats in the ibis jar on top
my brains and liver, all my organs mixed
together like a fetal mass . . . and so I am back
at the womb, a time when my interior ingredients
were indistinguishable from my exterior.

When I have another chance at breathing,
I think I will create a creature
whose interior thoughts were more visible
to its fellows, for I now understand
most of the strife between breathing ones
comes from misread intentions.

Animals are more precise in their
communications; their bodies change colors,
emit noises and odors, and there is no
misunderstanding of power. They rarely
kill one of their own species.

Human expressions have not kept up
with the evolution of our complicated thoughts,
and the skin is too dumb to sustain much more
than pleasure or pain, while the nuances our flesh
emits are seldom fathomed and never completed
until we are all in ibis jars wishing
for more succinct creatures.