How do I take the tar
Clogging my body
Thread it through my veins
Into my waiting palms
Where I can shape it
Disperse it,
Press an inky handprint to paper
And have it create something
And not destroy
It is always the way of the ink
To mark, blemish, to claim
A spot of the world for itself
And here I am, succumbed
Full of a seeping dark that,
Here, when the ink
Is fed by the grinning night
I am nothing but the mark
The blemish
The stain
And still I press myself to the world
Handprints that grasp for a way out
And create nothing
Nothing of any worth, at least