-1"To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour."
-by William Blake, Auguries of Innocence.

William Blake fingering the edge of Revolution

He has taught himself to meander past
the foggy machicolations of London; although
in his life, he only performed that
parlor trick once;

every other night he
dreamt in his own bed, traveling
only as far as his boot heels might
take him. Salivating

long enough to taste the acrid husks
of the poetry plucking the strings of
his fingers

laid out
beatifically: a
labyrinth of pen and ink.

Even though he fought conformity
with leather teeth, he only left London
once in his life.

Fingering Revolutions like
a book; turning the thick, water-marked
edges of France like a sojourn; then
Americana, as though it were the finest
delicacy,

until it becomes a seed within him. A
root, heavy from milky flames licking
the dividers of conformity;

try not to give him a name, he has none.
Attempt not to captivate him, his
inclinations are as wild as the prophecy of
verse;

yet no one reads, and
Catherine is grayish-green
shivering inside his palm; he says:
Do you pity me? And his voice falls,
although her smile widens like
an iron gate, parted like the lip of a sigh, and
nodding her head, he
echoes: Then I love you. Later he
taught her to read and write.

While he etched The Lovers Whirlwind
he discovered the curve disaster shapes
the face with; how a soulmate will
melt into the clouds of hell with you

because all else is forbidden, and
he worked until he died;

hollowing his wife's face out
with poverty, he sung verses
before departing,

the burial mound lost, tombs rotted
away with time, the lime carted away
as scrap to manicurize the lawn.

Later, a plaque would read:
Near by lie the remains of the poet-painter William Blake

even in death
you cannot place
him.

a/n: written for the July Writing Contest, via The Review Game