Effigy

Words are immortality
And the pen is the vein
Of life
Which grafts with will
And etches
Those irrevocable fragments
Of feeling
Down for all to see
And peruse, at leisure
Blood flows . . . with the ink-
And every tear-
A period.
Every slash-
A suicide
Marking the end
Of the life of a sentence-
Only now . . . a fragment
Remains of what
Once was
An effigy to all
Other fledgling poets
All we have
Are their words.