If you want the pearl
the oyster growled as a lioness
you will have to pry me from this rock
wrest my shell jaws open
cut my living muscle self apart.
Can you do that?
They can. They do.
They polish, bleach, buff,
label the pearl grade C
light luster, barely usable.
No one asks the dead
why are you dead, when
piously wearing their flesh.
For a pearl: the gravel
irritating my soft heart I coated in
substance of my shell.
A man with nimble fingers
nimble brain chains the pearls
creates a jolie-laide necklace
of 113 other variants.