The Heart, the Hand
With shaking hand I write in dimmed light
Strings of words robust burst and slip from my pen
With a grave heart I write
With a frail heart I forgive
It mimicks the sound of life
Of love and such things
Such fragile things which tend to burn in the sunlight
Things that are made all the more deceiving
A heaviness that lasts
That sticks to the ribs and heart now heavy
That rewrites itself till mad
Drawing circles around itself till silly
It punctures and weens
By elastic grip it clings
Turning right what was once impossible, or so it seems
In again, gone till forgotten completely
I rise on unsteady feet
Overseeing all that lies around me in heaps
Careful now not to impose or create hostility
For the hand is sensitive and unreasoning
By strike of silent blow it extends
More willing than most and less willing to forgive
What's scribbled in haste and panic hard to comprehend
Yet to the hand it stands on its own merit
For hope it seeks-
In the words it creates
Like prayers from an incompetent though loving beast
In braille it signs all of its messages plain
For fear that I may shrink
Become pale in its presence
For its divine love I seek
None other than that which the hand so frivilously speaks
From sleep I awake
To pages filled and marked
Dressing myself in them
As if talismans or some form of holy art
To make me, to REmake and refashion me clean
But never doing away completey as so I'll not forget the beginning
With shaking hand I scribble unpredictably
Lacking grace and intelligence and formality
But this is all I know
This pen and its speech
What it feels and the depths from which the words come from
These words, unlike any man, now standing up for me.
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