No. 6

From Eric Ormsby's Time's Covenant (Biblioasis, 2007). First published in Daybreak at the Straits (Zoo, 2004). For the graphophiles in all of us.

Six Sonnets on Sex and Death,
No. 6.

His heartbeat hovered in two grimy paws.
He learned the sadness of quotidian
utensils, learned the glum obsidian
of office lobbies with their cattlelyas
and cycads, learned to wind the gauze
of hypochondria around his median;
learned the banks of exile quite Ovidian.

Only the Eberhard Faber pencils gave him pause:

cylindrical and golden as a happiness,
solar-yellow, tallow-fluted, saffron-bold.
O happiness remembered in distress!
O vaporous savour of some vanished gold!

Unwritten scripts lay tacit in their tips.
Erasers stiff as nipples rubbed his lips.