PAPER: KENNETH LOBO

I haven't been this scared of paper since...
I’ve never been afraid of paper!
I have scribbled on paper with disdain
signing my name illegibly as if one day
I would be made to sign a million letters
by force and I might tire out and they might
never let me write again.
I drew quadrangles on paper - incessantly
like my life's secret was enclosed in that eight
sided figure, like a box of matches where every
match-stick removed, reduces the longevity of the
pack. I drew many thousand quadrangles so I
would never run out of matches,
setting fire to the past,
gathering the charred remains and
flattening them with my feet, starting from scratch.
Yes- when the pen ran out of ink, I tore the blunted
edge of the ball-point nib into sheets of paper
like a chain-saw laughing through a tree-trunk,
engraving hate, a stump for a memorial on which
future generations will rest their behinds wondering
why we can't see the butterflies anymore.
The butterflies are in our stomachs.
We consumed them with paper,
with writing and we muse
why do we read so little?
I’ve never been this scared of paper.

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