onyx black
glossy from front to back
looking up from the walnut coffee table
across from the television and cable

years in the making
if it’d rise as the bread baking
but it doesn't wear a jacket
and a lot of men just sack it

letters in printed lithography
a creamy paged biography
nursed, as a mother with her babies
but through the rabidness gave rabies

bended spine and stained
every line the writer pained
can’t make the New York Best seller's list
closed off like a fluid-filled cyst

no editor, agent or publisher
not in volumes like the travels of Gulliver
this self-published and vanity
leads to a life of insanity!