roué

i reflect

a thousand pages full
a tome, a towering tonnage
of verbiage and time devoted

in memory of those departed
of loves lost or never started

of a cad, a roué, a ruffian
charmers all
who left me sad, or blue, or suffering
as i'd fall

but writ in blood beyond the pain
the knowledge
i would do it all again
and yet again and again

for all the woe was born in hope
and hope ineffable and perpetual
within each cell of me is scrawled
as convict calendar etched into the wall

so i with ink or on this screen
so etch my heart and contravene my sense
in search of solidarity as my recompense