Staring at the image, I feel the color flush from my face

Serendipitous visage found in this blackened space

Pleading with the muses to release me from their vice

Melpomene refuses and says "Only your pain will suffice"

A consuming desire to make beauty from wondering

Slowly I expire to the sound of bone sundering

Visions of light covering the expanse of this chasm

The silent blight of emptiness brings muscle to spasm

Grinding stones echo in the absence of peace

Skin-bound tomes whose pages never crease

Water left chasing the blood away from my grin

The image erasing my antipathy for such sin

A fragrant rose; thorn-less and blue as the unreachable sky

My soul in repose with unrest clicking behind the eye

I wanted to believe that everything was just an ink blot

But found reprieve when I removed the metastatic clot

It is only a seed from a weathered and overturned tree

That fills the need for these sighing ghosts to be free