before flesh presses against instrument before graphite scrapes paper i confront the black monolith throbbing with music of power and paralysis stumbling half stunned seeking an archway, a passage, a door a solution to maze of smothering ebony it is the things i will not say the places i will not go the stories i will not tell the dreams i refuse to ignite every poem i have written has a punctuation mark before the first word sigil of success as i somehow shut down the power generators coward, face your fear! prisoner, rise up! don't you know, shame only binds with your permission? if it were a simple trade in that coin, exchange millimeter measurements of my personal dimensions the codex of the secret language binding my dark nemesis i am desperate enough for a poem of truth, even a disturbing one to sign that paper with dripping red pen some of these unwritten words, do not belong to me to make utterance from them as evil as any act done by angry hand some things are silenced by love sharing would leave the world astonished at something they name brave, but pales to love's courage which can never be observed or admired then there are my dear companions i know their names and stories well the things i have done the people i have been, that i am trying with all my soul and skin to never be again i will not with cleverness, wrap them in words so they emerge from cocoon as gentle proverbs of beauty they are buried, they are my humility and penance, they can someday be confessed, but always at my expense and never for my benefit lurking nearly indistinguishable amidst all that the things i simply do not see it is mostly for the chance to catch the moment when unknown becomes known that i stare into the abyss with pencil hovering over page what light reveals i bring beautiful or broken with words i write while marking another beauty black letters on a pitch black background with the words i will not write