To the Martyrs of Censorship,
          whose stewardship of truth
               consumed them before most
                    people begin to burn.

In my beardless youth
     all was wiped, slates ’rased
     down to the ashen earth,
     uncertain truth could move
     this face, or prove states
     of madness were worth
     their waiting out; pursuits
     so poorly made, more poorly paced
     and in my case, peerless hurts
     love hit its frequency through—
     tears, triumphs—and traced
     blindly the circles it silently unearthed.

In that wordless north
     all was white; blank page
     blown to the trash, into
     hands hurting to hold fate,
     frozen in my past, their hearth
     the hushing wind prayed
     onto my path by those who
     sought hypocrisy—heretics made
     into waxen heroes my rebirth
     ruined—burning them away,
     down to purest blaze; f(l)ame too
     reassuring for a poet to waste.

In their face I laugh, more
     fortunate than they to have placed
     my pen in life’s well; drawing forth
     a louder stereotype so few
     have played as well I’ve played:
     using one’s pain to converse
     with a wide-eyed wor(l)d glued
     to my signature’s latest page,
     each reader combing this fur(or)
     which grows on them as I do;
     this beard lengthening my stay
     in their minds, binding our purpose.