Soldiers of Paper

when time leaves me behind, days bleed into one another

like streaks of not-yet-dry ink blotting on the sheet

paper cuts, the sharpest of knives, the razor on my skin

its rules a semblant of rigor before my torporous gaze

its edges a guard—a guardian—a focus, its ambition

to surround the chaos of my thoughts in a prison

thinner than glass, blotting the shadows and

lets the wind blow it away—a stark contrejour

to the opaque heaviness of all that surrounds me

and the room, silent but for the rustling of sheets not yet bound

to one another, as my days, as my moods, as my travels

coursing through the ink a map, a topography

a tactical map for armies of thoughts, and i live as a historian

building my battalions from strokes, from letters, from words,

an army of verse and of its versifier(s) in all their complex

textures—paper is the umami, the gray,

the wooden staff to the weary hiker, paper is mustard and heavy cream

and the smell of time—a testimony to my two-dimensionality

in a three-dimensional world, and my linear time

and in crafting verse i make the non-dimensional infinity a mark, a dent

i fight the paper and what it represents—and i fight myself

paper is a vessel, crater of the greeks, where wine and sap as my thoughts

grow diluted, palatable,

consumed by dionysian adepts

and evaporated into the night