<?>
Word
up.
as if to denote, other than the obvious modern-day greeting,
a generalization about the origins of symbols
as from a higher plane
caught by a glimpse, fleeting
like fire in primordial hands
proffered by some prometheus somewhere
now suffering eternally
in chiseled far-away lands
an alien world that I create now for him using his gift
a katabatic precipice in vacuum soaring above
a lifeless stage, not unlike the
desolate hinterlands of a murderer’s mind
where perhaps he is indeed entombed
to be disemboweled daily
by raucous ravens
within the mind’s maniacal contemplations.
and if a gift so given as to be like the fire’s spark,
that innovation from which all others sprang,
enflaming the eternal lantern of Science
guarding us against the deeps of dark,
if a gift like that -
these words, these symbols, uttered meanings -
what the hand dare seize the fire?
though with the first we’ll never chat,
you can be certain in your reading that
you’ve met with one who thought it to seize,
thought to wield it over open seas
as if to cleave a path of meaning through the foam
and down that darkened crevasse roam.
Spark! the word leaps from the page,
dark from light,
the darkness illuminates, so sage,
so idiot, a savant directed only by my knowing
a minute tapestry of my sewing
that I expect others to reference well
trackless deeps away in their own cell,
but Spark! they’ll see across the void
and perhaps religion will be deployed,
as they make meaning from what I’d employed
for purposes entirely other to their dreams.
Yet it is well that words are held so holy.
for what is more sacred than the creator,
and how did that cosmic force contrive,
but to speak alive and make alive
the thespians and their theater
con-text
The Word,
is what we are
for what would we be to each other without language
but another savage agency, entirely apart from understanding,
and fit only to kill?
that is not meaning. but as long as we suppose
that the flower is a plant,
and that plant alive,
and called a rose,
We are the hand dare seize the fire
Spark! We light a black beacon
over the alkali desert
whether for heresy or worship
may not be told
an enigma machine perhaps, but
our power ultimate,
and as soon as We say, We cannot un-say
for what We have said is potent already, whispering,
perhaps even about us.
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