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The Poisoned Pen: Genesis of Vomiticus Grammaticus - Part III
III.
Instead of tossing the pen into a trash bin,
I willingly unleashed a new torrent of sin.
I prayed to God in hopes of protecting my soul,
in case Hell's Bells rang with the heaviest of tolls.
Trembling, I ran the tip of the poisoned pen
across the skin of my free hand, again and again.
Holding my breath, I waited
to see if my life suddenly abated.
But nothing happened!
Had the pen lost its poisonous power?
With growing curiosity, I added more ink to my skin,
covering its surface in an infernal monstrosity,
drawing foreign symbols quite unbeknownst to me.
For some reason I was immune to the ink's dark might,
if in fact it had not lost its strong venomous bite.
I had an insatiable drive to find out right away;
the question gnawed at my mind, causing it to fray.
And so I stepped into the darkness, away from the light,
slipping off into the shadows of a moonless night.
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Why not simply feed my curiosity with a lesser creature
such as another housefly?
I could have rather found a stray dog or alley cat,
even baited a coon, or an undesirable rat.
Instead, I made my way over to the old shipyard
with a large bottle of cheap cherry port,
in order to entice the most downtrodden sort.
I joined a small crowd around a sputtering, feeble fire,
started passing around the bottle, filling empty desire.
One by one the homeless men curled up in the cold,
and my nerves calmed down, I became more bold.
Soundlessly I reached over to the tramp sleeping to my left,
marking his wrist with a black slash from the pen.
He continued snoring in his drunken stupor
as I waited to witness the fate of this poor man.
It didn't take long for his snoring to cease.
I watched the tramp's breathing come to a halt;
the victim of a demise, entirely my fault.
Just to make certain, I felt for a pulse,
and didn't feel even the slightest faint beat
come from a body already losing its heat.
Heart pounding from this latest experimental thrill,
with wonderment, I slithered back home,
pondering my immunity towards the poisoned quill.
I could not sleep after returning home from the shipyard,
consumed by too many thoughts and a heart still pounding hard;
not to mention a conscience now awfully marred.
To no avail, I tried smashing the pen with a hammer -
its surface didn't register even a scratch.
When the pen didn't melt under the heat of a blowtorch,
I consigned to having finally met my match.
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