- Paper -




I didn’t know a piece of paper could weigh so much;

could hold so much burden in it’s simple trim lines.

Only one line.


Signatures are the prison keys of the ideas that lie

uncomfortably on cold steel bunks with no mattress

and large trenchant holes . . .

in the penitentiary of ‘sounds like a good idea’.


And ‘Leaving’ is only the scrawl of blue squid ink

leaking in maintained wretchedness across a

black line blurred by the pounding surf of

intruding stares onto one’s bowed head, and hand.

Only one hand.


Then, as the keys jangle heavy in the door

to rotate, twice, with echos of ‘what have I done’,

the latch evicts it’s grasp; the haughty iron door

clangs free,


and the papers are folded neatly,

and walked out by the shell

of someone tracing 12 years of history now locked tightly away.


. . . the ink from the pen as costly as a lifetime.