Architect/Arsonist

[aliaspseudonym]

As a young alien i read mostly to learn who i was,
which is the first use of stories--for the newly formed
to find what words in what order pulsates
through the fountanelle to resonate the zygomatic &
sphenoid bones--how else could they know
how they feel about spaceships & fairies
& monsters & dragons?


if i could be any bird i’d be
a magpie--if any animal, a hare
or maybe a cat. A magpie’s tail
is as long as the rest of its body.
These things are important &
worth thinking about.


i learned that i am someone
who wants to build inverted cities on the sky
& stare up at dusk at the streetlights as they
flare to life like newborn stars--i want to be
an architect of winds, of air, of thoughts, of playing cards,
of scrabble tiles each with a single letter, piling
up into words & sentences & paragraphs up into
the sky.


I am, i guess, one of the quiet ones--i knew
how to look through people, had to learn
how to look at them. It was, i think, in the stories
where i got the idea
to look inside them.


i love living things--i love things
that create themselves--i love
to play with them, to understand
how & where & why they grow,
& to gently guide them. The best stories
are alive too--a story, written, is only
a blueprint, a seed--a story, read, is a great tree of thought
that takes root slowly & springs up & branches into
who knows that kind of tree, or what fruit or what shade,
what shape & colour of leaves & flowers
you might find there.


The quiet ones have no spoken
language--though some are fluent
in human soundwords, they tire--we take shelter, sometimes
neath silent wordtrees with paper leaves that
take us to worlds where you can see
into the soul
without making eye contact.


I’ve learned i like words too much, i think,
to be a deconstructionist--for all their failings
you have to admire the brave little letters,
‘t-r-e-e’ for saying: i signify treeness--
look, i have seen many trees & they are
not all very much alike, and there is little of
t-r-e-e about them--yet, the wordchains can also
take you places: four letters can carry you away to
an entire universe of tree, which is surely
a sort of magic.


I’ve found the bad words, too, which bind & stifle
the growth of living things--names that burn brandlike
into the named, impose their meanings on the real:
weak or strong, natural or unnatural. The worst kind
of lie fights always to become true--look: i have seen
the sickly cities built from these lies; their supports are rotten--
they daily demand blood sacrifice
to oil ill-fitting gears & always they whisper:
“this is what must be done, there is no other way.”


I would be not just an architect, but
an arsonist of thoughts--i would build siege engines--
hurl flaming oil--sing firesongs. Bit by bit
the lies are burning. Piece by piece repair
the skycity. One by one the stars ignite
to light the way through the midnight gloom.


I want to burn it all down, & build a city
where it’s safe to be a boy or girl or
magpie, & to believe in everything or nothing, &
not even the quiet ones’
wordless language is drowned out. This
is what the stories taught me.

Comments

[avia]

I want to burn it all down, & build a city
where it’s safe to be a boy or girl or
magpie, & to believe in everything or nothing, &
not even the quiet ones’
wordless language is drowned out. This
is what the stories taught me.

Oh.

This makes me hurt inside, in a good way. The images you create in this poem is beautiful... I guess that's also appropriate, as it's about images.