Lost Words

Ink on ink, stacks of words, lines bent from my mind in haste,
well in wretched motion’s scent within the pile of blotter’s waste.
Denied the spark of light to find a useful purpose where they lay,
lepers of my orphans, renounced to shelves of dim decay.
The dust of ages crack their binds, fermented time lends ochre’s brand
infusing dim their history upon neglected pages, tanned.

Why do they still remain there?
What purpose can they ever fill?
Whose eyes will ever read them?
What holds them in my ebbing will?

My orphans calmly line the shelf, at peace in holding nodding thoughts
that stem form frozen moments summed when grand solutions aptly caught
the hope to bend an errant mind, the rush to solve the world’s woes,
the drive to change, create such love that ecstasy would roll in throes…
Science, math, and cultures gripped. Politics of hatred delved.
Invention, story, fiction, truth all gathered through the ink, there shelved.

In some I rarely venture a visit through their ashen sparks.
Others, I’ve not the courage yet to reach or touch their pages, dark.
But yet they are my orphans, my hopeful babes, my lepers scarred.
For by my hand became here, and by my hand stay safely barred.

I pity those who find them beyond the last of breath in me.
I pray they’ll not destroy them, yet maybe let just some fly free.