To think, moonless nights
slinking through graveyards
and now this.
A man must get his hands dirty, sure,
but who’d have thought
grubbing in dank burial patches
would grit his fingernails
into a badge of slimy, smelly honor.
But here she is,
emerging from the slab
in my laboratory,
a creature of dazzling beauty,
giving lie to all the
worm-riddled corpses
that birthed her flesh.
Forget beauty in the eye of the beholder.
Its crests nowhere more stunning
than in the beaming orbs of the creator.
I stitched her parts together.
I gave her breath,
set her heart to beating
like tom-tom messages
to my own exalted organ.
No worm-riddled skull now.
No mold. No mildew. No rot.
Not a modicum of dust.
No nauseating odors.
She steps from my imagination
as much as from this drawing board
of wire and tubes,
bubbling gas and boiling engines.
And so what if others
will find her gruesome.
Bear in mind the process.
Their God is not reduced
to scouring broken coffins
for ingredients.
He has all of biology on His side.
I just have Igor.
