The Poet’s Slave

The poet’s slave at last cried out:

“Enough! Sufficient! Cease!

Jot no more jets of whim and thought,

or writerly caprice!

Etch no more lines across my lines,

For I have had my fill.

My skin entire is crisscrossed

With the scratchings of your quill.

You’ve written across me, unwooed and lost me

ten times over; I have vowed

to house no more,

thy chaos proud.

I’ve sworn

to disallow

thy etchings

on this untanned

vellum-to-be.

why not

simply pour

thy verses over every wall,

as other madmen do?

Be thou a vandal,

deface a monument!

or steal away

on some excuse

in the home of a friend

(if a friend you have,

somewhere)

and find a moment alone

to toss off words

on the underside

of a table;thou hast all the places

known and secret,

for the length and breadth of travel,

and I have naught but this room,

this cage,

the tiny surface area

of myself,

whose self

thou hast taken, rudely, sir,

rudely,

and I,

I never cared for you,

or your words,

our your madness,

and I shall,

in a moment,

our agreement sever,

and I shall go.

I will host no more

thy musing sore,

thy wordly odd

mistmatchings,

my skin,

still soft,

will be no croft

to thy strange thoughtly

hatchings.

Look now: I am overmuch embossed,

the letters overlap, one cannot make out the meter,

words are lost

and rhymes,

if rhymes were intended,

jut out like rocks,

to capsize the unwary sailors

who try to follow the map

of thy peculiar thought

across the territory

of my flesh.

behold:

Sideways, backwards, every inch

Is covered with your poetry, good and bad,

You’ve gifted me with words until they pinch.”The poet finally looked up,

from sharpening his quill.

“My fire and inspiration,

My muse, my love, my will –

This madness mine? I now remind,

(if we let the truth be bared):

This madness is not mine alone.

it is quite jointly shared.

Thy love is wild and curious,

A thing no-one could tame.

Thou know full well it’s I who’d leave;

this house is in thy name.

Say thou the words, and I am gone,

To sleep on dirt and rocks,

Except we both are tight entwined

by the most binding of locks:

Why do you keep me? I won’t ask.

Thy reasons are thine own,

Why thou did raise me from the muck?

Why thou didst leave thy throne?My darling bleeding palette,

If you’re leavetaking, answer, then:

Why dost thy back arch high, even now,

for the sharp fang of my pen?”