He called himself a Grezzle
Though no one knew
What the appellation implied.
Was it an endearment from youth?
Did it indicate his rank or station?
Was it a gang sentiment or warning?
Was it nonsense or the abbreviation
Of an equally improbable brand?
I could discern nothing in the vacuum
That had absolved him entirely from sight
And I suspect the nothingness
Ran deep for his smile too was empty
A basin, a scoop, queerly toothless.
Whatever may be gleaned from his omissions
He suffered no infirmary.
His thoughts were voluminous
Beyond our petty human musings.
I found myself fumbling
Within his scarred orifices
Infinite and minute
He became an object of great fascination
Like a local quarry or a derelict house.
I suspect he was not a man
An alien, a demon, a quasi god perhaps
But no man ever lived such as this.
A Grezzle may well have been a sentient
As of yet unrecorded.
He lived amongst us
Curiously, in his corner house
Arranged with doll-like fragility.
He never sat in those timid chairs
Or laid in his well-dressed bed
He didn’t even bother to disguise
The plastic fruit
The neat rows of unused china cups
The gape-mouthed closets
That held not a stitch.
I believe the only object
For which he had any use
Were the books
But he did not read them
He opened his great round mouth
And swallowed them whole.
Then to our amusement
He’d recite the entirety of them
Male or female, young or old
He could become anyone
And had he access to our diaries
He might well have taken our souls.
I think I may have loved him
To look into that mouth, like a universe
I felt things more immense
Than the heart set to contain them
I knew things that words cease to mention
Though not for want of trying.
His jaw and nose were perfect
The thick hair that never wholly settled
The great height and the athletic form
The patient eyelids forever pressed
And those lips behind which nothing
And everything was simultaneously glimpsed
There is no doubt that he saw me,
Every molecule
Even my nonsense must have meant
A good deal more to him than it did to me
For he always took the time unravel it.
We made a monument for him,
A great black obelisk
Which stood outside
The now gutted library
On the day he disappeared
(and he really did right in the middle of tea
his unfilled cup the very last implication
Of his occupancy)
Instead of flowers, sheaths of paper
Of poems and cockeyed manuscripts
From the grandest to the most feeble
Of our literary attempts
And though we never saw him again
I suspect he saw us quite clearly
For every page was seized by morning.
*
This character is influenced somewhat by a character called O in Planescape Torment but I put my own spin on it. I love creating characters and couldn’t resist using Grezzle as a name XD
For
https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2015/03/05/tale-weaver-prompt-3-making-sense-of-the-nonsense/
*
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