MELT DOWN
This sheet of paper melts
The words erased over hot coals
not shredded but to flakes
as if a landscape cut and torn
by what is made ; shrapnel laid mangled
the colour of grey -
white in the heat to lay ghostly in the shadows
to a single layer bonded only by
the carbon of life; without skeleton -
And surely if I were to make a sound
It would surely crumble directly into dust;
To what I think I never will
And never, to a written word,
When even though I know that I will surely perish
It is never so readily accepted
Nor so readily understood.