The Stain of Ink

Crowescent Verse

 

A black bitterness seeps from my pores

As atramental sweat; melancholic humor in excess.

It bleeds on white sheets like the sanguine liquid that wonts

To course through human veins, but spilled on cotton.

That same insatiable darkness discharges from mine eyes,

Soaking dove feathers, weighing the plumes down

With grave and onerous lead.

From this deluge, a crow emerges, sable as sombre night,

Tainted by the very pitch that oft defines its nature.

Sacramental rains begin to pour from the floating firmament:

Blessèd, baptismal droplets kissed by angel lips,

Falling from bliss, phlegmatically, to bathe the world.

Yet this crow, dripping of vicious black and fluid penance,

Is evermore stained by the indelible shadow of sin.

The obsidian derelict sits with wanton hope,

Perched at silent heights as a bête noire,*

Forsaken by the choleric fiends below.

Sophisticated in sorrow, the hueless bird pulls its own quill,

Setting the sappy tip against pure white emptiness,

Filling the void with delightful tragedy and miserable pleasure

As words shuffle off this mortal coil.

Those heavy verses, pregnant with burden and trial,

Give birth to laments and elegies for the stain of ink.

 

 

 

*French, translates literally: "black beast" (used to describe an anathema)

Reviews

[Tomás Ó C..]

A great use of language in this peice