Scars gouged through wood - whittled, age-worn grooves,

angles and curves releasing someone's name

from the desk they once called theirs. Each line proves

the testing of some long-forgotten fame,

 

some cock's reputation, whose ego's claim

to eternity's been overwritten

by a succession of hands - lives bitten

and chewed by history, the very same

 

hunger to be remembered by others

who followed them, perhaps younger brothers,

feeding their egos in turn, wanting much

the same thing - immortality, the touch

 

of memory's bid to stay their passage

through time - 'i was here' that graven message.