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Ode to an Ink Pen MAG
I wonder how it must feel
To be the fountain from which a great
river flows
Or the sky from which pours
A song of rain –
Tears heaven sent.
Though it seems
In using you,
My ink pen,
It all becomes apparent,
For it is you alone from which flows
The poetry molded by the soul
Of the weak;
The hungry.
The trials and tribulations that
Strike a harmonious chord with
The pale complexion of notebook paper,
Decorated like a soldier home from battle
With your color.
I gaze into the soul of your being –
The blood flowing through your veins
With all the depth of the night sky,
Black and blue like a bruise
On the muscle of the greatest of warriors –
And I see all that is to be told,
As though your sleek plastic
Is only a façade
To disguise all the pain and sorrow;
Hopes and dreams
That you will one day share with the world.
As though your factory-made casing
Is a sort of armor:
A helmet against the perils of life,
Never surrendering the opportunity
To tell a story.
Each word you tattoo to the page:
As permanent as those hastily
Painted on the withering bodies of Jews
In the story your ink told us
In the diary of a young girl.
Your ink that has remained
As it was when she grasped your body
With all the gentleness she could muster,
Shaking as she drew each word
That would stab an indifferent society
Seventy years later.
You are the grandson of Dickens
Christie
Shakespeare
The pens they used to mold society
With plastic and feather
And ink.
The same ink that Hancock used
To slur his name on the birth certificate
Of the United States itself.
The same ink used to write the note
That gave the world a reason
For that boy's early death
And gave the newspapers a headline.
A headline in the very ink that flows
from your mouth
To the Hallmark card signed for her
birthday.
The same ink that
On a Dollar Store calendar
Marks the baptism
Of the child the sterile soldier had,
“Abigail Josie Keller.”
Or at least that's what it says
In ink
On the birth certificate.
They intend to call her Abby.
Sometimes, I hold your hand
And you hold mine,
And together we write a letter
To that boy I'm too scared to talk to.
And I make a copy for myself,
Printed in the same ink stained on my fingers
From when I wrote the first draft of the letter
And tore it up in pieces
Because it simply wasn't worthy of
everything I felt.
And for at least a week it will stay
On the fleshy pads of my appendages,
And every time I'll look down,
I'll remember you,
And everything I've told you without
speaking
A word aloud.
And I wonder what you'd say if you
could speak,
And then I look down,
And I see for myself.
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