Human Atlas

Because the body really 
is Mars, is Earth or Venus or the saddest downsized
Pluto, can be booked, bound, mapped then.
Or rendered like something off the bone, fat just under 
the animal skin, to lard, 
cheaper, quicker than butter, like stillness
belies restlessness, like every yes
was or will be not, never, no,
                                          none of that.
A full section in such a book
keeps the skeleton quiet. (So untroubled to be specific, to say 
femur, rib, half-minute of splendor, 
to stare like that
stops time...) Or slick pages and pages given over
to slow the blood, remake muscle, to un-secret 
that most mysterious lymph, its arsenal 
of glands under the arm, at groin, at neck, awful
ghost lightning in it.  Inscrutable.
                                                    Complete: because
the whole body ends, remember?  
But each ending
goes on and on. Complete: because some 
minor genius with a pencil, with ink, with drastic color
makes that arm you've  known for years
raw, inside out, near wanton run of red vessel and nerve, 
once a sin to look, weirdly now,
what should be hidden. Oh, it's garish 
                                                       equals austere.
Compute. Does not compute. Tell me.  
Then tell me who that 
me is, or the 
you understood, the any of us, our precious 
everything we ever, layer upon 
bright layer.