The Chronicles of Wasted Time

Idle under brilliant oil treading softly,

Leaning softly towards the nightstand

With quill in trembling fingertips

A word is spoken silently.

Inaudibly, whimpers hard are heard

And sink like owl’s wings into a cloudless sky,

And sink like vagrant winks into a morbid night

That runs outside a staggered breath as ink-stains claim,

As blood-drips from a blade,

The white of cotton sheets.

How heavenly in swelling verse the unknown comes

To common conscience, and under flickering fire

Pen-tips like longswords penetrate a shimmering bright and moonlit darkness.

How monumental rise the vagabonds from graves of cobblestone and tin!

Out from beast’s jaws where soulless sin is fashioned climb

The whores of one-hundred-thousand grains of time,

And seep through walls on gliding oil,

Where only sightless eye regards them.

And out again through raven water rains

The Art of Men, as from the well it forms familiar shapes on parchment

To live inside the head of one;

As set in tombstones names gain perpetuity,

As set in verse such names are heard again.