He spent a lifetime burning with infectious flames for all,
a passion not adjourning till the moment of his fall

as life collapsed and ended with an unintended crash,
a fortress, once-defended, now a blend of dust and trash.

He harbored an infection in the armor of a scourge,
a virus of rejection that inflected every surge

through veins to kill the living by an undeterred attack
with words as unforgiving as a dagger in the back

of friends or foes who listened to the oratory flood
of crimson inks that glistened with his sacrificial blood

and shone a sanguine warning as the writer went insane,
a brain in solemn mourning that the pleasure went to pain.

He died, alone and tragic, as a shadow of the self
that once created magic in the books that warmed his shelf.

David Nelson Bradsher

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-shadow-speaks/