Erosion

A man owned clothes that did not fit,
feeble-minded, sharing a moronic wit,
carved his living with ghosts each day,
human husks, innards rife with decay.

Withered confidence and lack of valor,
lines etched his face, an ashen pallor.
Drudgery replaced his given name,
lodged in a rut, every day the same.

Then, a distant uncle decided to die,
one whose passion was to fly,
aloft on printed words he soared,
so assigned them to one nephew bored.

He knew naught to think of the gift,
picking through titles, sort and sift.
Interest bloomed within the third hour,
spreading tenderly as a yearning flower.

At night he'd sit in dim light,
reading each volume, pages gripped tight.
Dust-cloaked phone on a lonely shelf,
an avatar of his former self.

Desperate to tell all mankind
of things he'd read that opened his mind.
He longed to share each bizarre thought,
brain against body, to the end they fought.

But, too late.
The decay did spread,
too far into his heart where it had bred,
mulitplied to a number fantastic,
he ceased, book in hand, smiling,
in his chair of plastic.