Return of the Haruspex

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Everybody is a book of blood;
wherever we’re opened, we’re red.
— Clive Barker

Sometimes a poem, pulsing like a heart
beneath the skin, a sanguine twist of truth
uncoiled by divinatory arts,
augurs more than visceral volumes can.
Life’s unbound galleys, rarely in demand —
a kind of codex in the proper hands —
cry out for readers from the vault of ribs.
Behind each frontispiece a story lies
that never lies, however convolute
and raveled by the years beyond the crib.

Have all the tales been told? Is all reprise?
Your new editions stacked like Babel tower —
but all I find are weak anthologies,
their pages guarded by a grim disease,
and novels only Dahmer could devour.

Return of the Haruspex originally appeared in Dreams & Nightmares.

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