Upon the pastel parchment of my unscrolled flesh,
on pages that are daily fresh,
—bleached by a sun of untempered fears,
watermarked by joy's disconsolate tears—
in letters of each man's peculiar script,
is my story prehumously writ.
Neither legend be it nor a tale of lore,
just the track and trace of weathered steps leading to that final shore,
told by all my authors recounting less or recalling more,
my epic ordinaire.
Marked—
each editor's hand hurriedly redacting,
opining rewrites of how I'm acting.
The splash of words that make the print,
manage only to suggest or hint,
what beneath my graffitied skin there lies,
leaving fact and truth to divinity's eyes.
Among the myriad of lines now written,
by which I'm praised much less than by countless curses judged and smitten,
is one composed by a most friendly scribe,
who passioned penned what others would for only bribe,
a sentence simple and quite plain,
that whether believed or doubted in disdain,
reads each day the very same,
expressing by love's witness freely made,
that the lien against my life has been forever paid.
The watered Word tends me in every foreign place I've strayed,
renewing within where my body outward has decayed,
and vindicating me in the most damning guilt,
against the case my accusers all have hating built.
Thus, when my life is once unrolled,
and the story by the final Author is fully told,
reading He will make new again what was thought only to be ever old,
my epic ordinaire.
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