Sanctuary of Ink
A Poem on the Written Word
Wars rage across shattered lands
Baalbek’s temples stand in red sands
Death reigns and bullets fly
A crimson sky under which dreams die
Wildfires burn where groves stood
Kangaroo Island shores meet fire
Flames lick the barks of the Eucalyptus
The once green land now a pyre
Chaos and fighting
Fire and death
Mountains of doubt
Rivers of hate
Valleys of despair
All in this little blue dot
Spinning in an endless void
Yet a stroke and spin
A glide and a curve
Words bloom, stories loom
A drop of ink, a line in motion
I glimpse another world
Beyond my touch
The paper whispers, the nib sighs
A universe blooms with every mark,
Where shadows fade beneath the stars
And dreams awake within the dark
The pen, no sword, yet sharp and true
Slices through the veils of deceit
As sharp as Elendil’s sword
When he broke Sauron’s grasp
In this limitless universes
Men falter
And flounder
For curiously enough,
They find themselves lost
For how can they rule a world
With no bounds
For how can they rule a world
With no lies
But not I.
With each stroke, I carve a space
A little cave
A tiny sanctuary
Where chaos bends to gentle grace
In my little cocoon
Solace I find
As imagination binds me
and thus sets me free
In the rivers of ink
And the forests of page
The truth dares to break free
From its cage
Yet even here, they creep in
With whispers seeking to confine
What they rue
And what they want to hide
But here in my sanctuary
As perilous as the heart of Fangorn
The truth will forever take root
Woven as deep
As the stones of the Eldar
So let me sleep in my sanctuary
For in this realm of ink and light,
I find my voice, my truth and my light
To shake the thrones of the emperors and gods
And let the veils of truth quietly fall.
