This is my plea
to be granted this fine opportunity,
I request not gold or power or fame
All that tends to get old and just brings me shame.
Oh, please oh, kind sirs and madams and automatons may be,
grant me thine request to join thee!
I may be simple and I may be a tad old,
But I promise you my writings shant get old.
I therefore await thine response with unbearable agony,
until such time herein I can write poetry.

Inspector Dork was not pleased with himself

he had interrogated everyone in the house
only to be knocked down by
impenetrable alibi

Spouse Susan slept soundly through the night
and was awakened in the morn
when the alarm bell rang in his room

Daughter Debby's room was a floor down
she was up with her studies
plugged to earphones

Son Simon was out for the night
he was at his friend's place
for a birthday party

Maid Maddie made his bed
when the clock in his master's room
was chiming ten

Butler Bill having served a glass of milk
closed the door behind him
and retired for the night.

Inspector Dork was about to leave the victim's room
when his eyes fell on the clock pendulum

it was not swinging

he knew who was lying.

broken
surroundings
hidden
underneath
discrete skins
flat spots
drowning in
superficial
layers of
constricted
capillaries
walls
embed in
bleached skin

made of
salty tears
and eggshell
crystals
cutting out
the wafting
of diurnal
light-blue
ozone

resistant
coating
burning on
crusted
cheek
beneath
thin
recalcitrant
cuticles

forcing into
lamping
layers of
red-blue-
purple-yellow-
green-white-
ecchymosis
symptoms
just­if­ying
on its own