Sunday, April 3, 2022

The Tragedy Of The Page...

When it's empty
It could become anything
But it has to wait on everything
Perhaps even forever
Being empty...
Being nothing...

What is it waiting for
The odds are aweful
Most likely it will be used poorly
To hold scratches, scribbles, scawls
Of some nacent notion, or numbing notes
Left in lines so all too soon forgotten
Resting there unrefined and unimportant
Until dissolving in decay
Or being crinckled up and tossed as trash
Having been of little or no use at all

The page could find other fates
It may hold something to be preserved
For post-dated purposes
And become stuffed in a drawer
It could become a surrogate surface
To help some pre-conceived idea
Become born in a more fleshed-out form

On rare ocassions the page transcends
It's flat face takes on the form of something deep
As it's imbued with inspired images or insights
Which eyes may gaze upon with wonder
And wish to save forever
Or as long as the page can be preserved

What tragedies await the page
What fate awaits so final and forever
One entangled or emblematic of my own
Or one beyond my bumbling blabber

Are we mere pages unto fates
The surfaces of some higher hand
At work or play unto some scribbling
I pray with hands that mock and mimic
As they scrawl upon this page
Unto that higher hand unseen
Inscribing upon the surface of my soul
That these marks we leave
May mean something, somehow
And that there be more than smears
Upon this otherwise empty plane
Here as well as here, the soul as the page

Even now this page seems oblivious
Of every mark I've made
Am I so senselessly unknowing
Of unseen lines upon me now

The tragedy of the page
Is the tragedy of all empty waiting things
Being nothing
Waiting for anything
To make them something
More than just a flat oblivious thing

I leave these words here
So that I may move beyond them
And make my marks elsewhere
Somewhere they may do more 
Than stain the surface of a page
Unseen, unfelt, unread, unknown
So that the tragedy of the page
May not touch some surface
Be it but here, or well beyond

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