Fountain Penmanship

Written today, Sunday, December 7, 2008, about two hours ago
CAUTION: Content is long, about 740 words. Take time to complete, or there is very little point in attempting.


This fountain pen
Spurting forward with a liquid
No one dares frolic in
It does not shine
With the fresh clarity of fantasy
It does not gleam
With the mischief of youth
Its splashes do not sound
Of laughter or music
It falls with a muted thud
It slides like a slug
A gleaming trail on an uneven surface
A shade between green and gray
Barely the hint of color
Aged and weary
Drying to dust soon after
Not the green of glass
Nor the shade of thick, murky water
And not the grey of a dreary day
But the green of parasitic moss
And the grey of a fungal poisonous mushroom
Blended together
Under a shine seen only in the eyes
Of a disappointed, helpless and resigned child
A child by name only
But at heart something
Very possibly
Quite completely
Removed

Looking upon this fountain pen
It’s accompanying inkwell
A dull pot without a lid
To preserve its suspicious contents
Always evaporating
Into the air that you breathe
Be careful
It could be poisonous
But it never empties
Always brimming with this
Murky fluid
The fountain pen is callous but careful
Not to spill the contents of the inkwell
Onto the rough surface
Of the old wooden table

The wise aged table
Once with an inviting varnish
And a woody, refreshing scent
Now carved and discolored
Too dry to be moldy
And too sturdy to be useless

Once in a while
More often than is realized
The fountain pen forgets its place
Dipping into the inkwell
With too much vigor
Excitement is not to be found in a place such as this
Yes, the fountain pen forgets its place
And the murky fluid it is convinced is ink
Overflows from inside the inkwell
Creeping over the edge
Hesitantly sliding down
The side surfaces
Searching dearly for a hint of friction
Along the side surfaces
Of the eerie onyx inkwell
And though there may be
Inconsistencies along the surface
This fluid isn’t nearly
As friendly as water
And it slides down helplessly
Until it reaches the table
The dingy, rough
Though not splintered
Wooden table

The fountain pen stubbornly reacts
With sputtering astonishment
Absolutely every single time
It sees that the mess
Is not the grey-green color
It has resigned itself to
Upon the pieces of parchment
It acquaints itself with
No
The pool of color collecting
At the base of the inkwell
Is a splash of an unfamiliar hue
On the dulled, frayed surface
Like the trauma of female puberty in pristine hospital sheets
But this shade of red
Is not nearly as bright
It is thicker than dirty blood
It is darker than a cloudy night sky
It is a red
But a red of such blatant strength
You could only simply watch it
As it simply sits and pools
In all of its glory

Not merely is its color so striking, however
Its fragrance is majestic
Mysteriously
Pleasing
So foreign
The fountain pen can only watch
The fluid flow
Until the fragrance reaches its senses
And it can only focus on that one sense of smell
Attempting futilely to embrace it
Unmoving
Afraid it will disappear at the slightest change in movement

Meanwhile

The fluid creeps unnoticed
Right into the surface
The table breathes a sigh of life
The sneaking suspicious fluid
Seeping into the grain
Into and through the cracks
Like veins on a leaf

The fragrance disappears
The fountain pen reawakens
Only to find that nothing has changed
The same stoic inkwell
On the same resigned table
As it was just moments ago
The fountain pen, flabbergasted
Returns to the indifferent piece of parchment
Soon to forget all about it

The Red Luscious Fluid

Until the next time
It finds reason to be overzealous
And dip into the inkwell
With too much vitality
The table remains waiting
For that next time
The naïve fountain pen
Slips up and splashes
The inkwell remains sturdy
Simply allowing their antics
For this is the way of survival
This was their cycle of life
Parchment comes and goes
For reasons they care nothing about
As they remain
And inconsistently continue
On in their way

The only signs of their livelihood
The dreary ink upon those sheets of parchment
Lying among the many sheets of parchment
In this age of information

The three beings together
Indifferently
Indefatigably
And infallibly
Albeit mysteriously
Do remain.