i have been found guilty of horrid infringements and some inarticulate form of witchcraft.
i have profoundly offended the council by wearing asymmetric eyes and growing lengthy nails.
i have been stigmatized of peering at harpies' banquets and secretly dining with absconders and lunatics,
of abjectly disregarding century-old garnishments
and working in dark rooms with vindictive potions.

*
honorable audience,
if i am not a quota of light and order's heteronomic equilibrum
and neither can my left hand emend my ink's vagrant undoing,
please consent to my malfeasance
and permit me to embrace
my onliest counterpart, chimera and defense,
in the assumption that maybe, just maybe,
far away, in some forgotten abyss,
some late night traveller
might for a second ascertain
a tangled drop of black magic.
to each his own armor anyway.