each rhyme that she took

Sawdust blown away
Wood shavings brushed aside display/
A well designed
Defiled shell of failure in a play/
In vain he searched for characters to trade his scripted part/
Depicted part of what he was so far
She numbly ripped his heart/
Retarded sense of context
He dissected each encounter/
Bound each prospect with potential
Built a fence around her/

It used to be effortless
Stressed syllables matched without pressure/
Sounds aligned without measure/
Pleasure was expressing a thought
Not substituting for a lesser word with a better flow/
Nor throwing out a token that would let her know/

Stoop within the gutter
Prod the vagrant's vacant book
Look at when she left his life and each rhyme that she took
She shook the being she was to fit his neatly inked desires
He'd write to grasp her shadow though he lacked the words required
So on they danced their "cat and mouse" till one of two things happened
He ran his heart of ink or she just couldn’t read and vanished