Ink
by Rachel Lewis
All men, all times, all pain,
all love, all mad afflictions
are but ink.
Ink in the Genesistic proclamation
Demanding illumination,
Ink in the Darwinian theories
Commanding compensation.
Ink in marriage contracts
when maidenly comfort yields,
Human ink has oft been spilt
for words of ink on battlefields.
It transcribes the music
whose polyphony can guide us,
It prescribes the suture
for the diplomat’s arthritis.
Ink can grant a pardon,
can send a man to death,
I wrote my love a note of ink
before I spoke a breath.
Ink can stain a record
falsify or implicate,
Newspapers are soaked with it,
about the latest reprobate.
It pours from pens, from poets,
from spite or for solution,
Ink circulates, it is the blood
in the veins of revolution.
All men, all times, all pain,
all love, all mad afflictions,
all because of a plague of boredom …
and a bare knee …
and 4 initials that felt they needed to be written there.