Stay strictly
humane — do no
harm.  Gentle
the way through.

Leaper? No,
crawler.  Stay close
on your belly to
soil.  Get stained.
Low eye level
is universal enough.

Believe not in the 
door, but in the hinge. 
Value not the leaving, but
the bag you carry
upon leaving —

stay close to the earth
and see what you make
of the view, the filthy slither
ahead, the gentle
way through.  Do no harm,
especially not
to your self. 

It is hard to fathom
that such soft edges
could draw such a large volume
of blood, but there it is, 
a straight cut perfect line
across the thumb,
spilling red onto the desk.

Paper can be
a most dangerous weapon —
but let’s not go down the route
of discussing bad laws and treaties,
warrants, evil books and screeds.
Those are all beside the point
that begs to be made here:
that those thin sheets
can open skin as easily
and cleanly as any knife.

I’ve done my share of bleeding
from well angled paper.
I’ve felt how much wince
a cut can deliver. 
I’ve done the slightly horrible thing,
pressing the lips of the wound
to make the flow burst and bubble
and drip onto the dropped page
leaving me on it to stay.

I’ve tossed a few of those pages —

but in my notes, in my files,
more than a few remain
with a dirty word or two upon them,
written after they’d dried;

each dated, brown cups
where the droplets fell
rippling the plane of the sheets,
ink laid right over them
describing my cursing, my
hissing expressions of pain,
my self-described idiocy
in plain view there.

Tonight, though,
there was no paper to stain.
The cut came from
something being read,

and so I wiped it up,
and kept on typing,
hoping this is enough
to remind me of the past
when I had visible reminders
of how much this work
can hurt.