Poem Frame

Sudeep's poem, as workshopped:

1
It is mid-afternoon now,
the sun streaks slantwards

through the attic's double-glazing
melting the scorched ink

in my crowded note-book
that lies blanched

on the sparse weathered table.
Hardened sepia-stained lines

that once approximated to
a flock of metaphors,

now rearrange themselves
into a congregation of phrases,

a lineation of new line-breaks:
stops that defy

even the physics of refraction,
thoughts that now re-surface

and resurrect just as
passion and reverence did

within the folds of The Prophet.

2
It is still mid-afternoon,
the blue blaze makes the pages

of my book flip over gently
in the invisible wind of silence.

The heat penetrating the glass
focuses even more fiercely

smoking out redolent similes,
questioning the whole point,

the nib of writing itself.
Underneath the permanent scar

of jet-black fluid and heat
is pulp, half-dead.

Beneath the persistent hoarse-
drone of metal-scratching

is bleached pulp, half-alive,
its cotton laid sheets

carefully encoded with
the magic arc of a gold-tip.

Words appear, and more
words. And under them all,

I discover much later,
a small spring insect

that lay mummified,
quietly crushed below

the weight of words,
its innocence and juice

trapped under oppression
of ambition and intellect,

baptised and bloodied.

3
It is mid-afternoon,
and I too lie, dead-

still, blanched, bloodied.