Burn Alongside

after Fire Monster (part 4)

As the

Fire Monster

Devoured

            And

As the

Book Burners

Watched,

            She

            Contemplated

Leaping in,

Holding onto the books

            As

They spun their last

            Fiction web

            Into the sky of growing night.

 

She wondered if—

If she were just ash—

Could she touch the moon

And reveal it as a lie?

Or would she simply burn—

            Burn

            And

            Die?

 

When tongues of flame

Devour all the words—

Do the words still mean the same?

Fiction

            Turned to

            Burnt to

Ash

            And

Fiction Ash

To poison the atmosphere?

Could she—

Should she—

Join in?

 

Her hand was in the flames before she should stop it,

Toying with the idea and with the

Blue of the inner flame—

And it hurt so bad that it

Didn’t hurt

And the

Book Burners

Didn’t move an inch—

Not even an inch to stop her.

 

Would she burn to blue too?

Like the words

Like the inner cone of flame?

Would she flash a brilliant moment and then

Twist and pop and fizzle-fade out?

Would she

Truly

Burn the same color

As Wordsworth—

As Longfellow—

As Frost?

 

She figured she’d take a gamble and

Find out,

For if you can

Burn a moment alongside—

The same color as—

Such beautiful poetry...

Even if you fade to gray ash the

Next moment—

            Isn’t it—?

            Isn’t that one moment

                        Worth it all?

 

As her soul went up

In ashen gray

To dance forever in the atmosphere,

The Book Burners

Made no move to

Stop her,

Just stood there

Still

In a sadistic salute.

Reviews

[Legion]

Another great piece to this. This, for some reason, triggered an idea for a poem or short story. You can even write it if you want (since you seem to be in this line right now anyway). It would be called Tatoo or some such title. It is a story about after the destruction of literature. The only means of reading a book at that point is to find someone in the Cult of Palabras (palabras, if I remember correctly, is spanish for "words" - I could be wrong about that). All the members have tatooed parts of or a whole book if it was short enough upon their bodies. If the members are caught though, they too are burned just like the books they have copied. What do you think?

[Dressed in Poetry]

Oh ouch. I love the way this ends. It seems fitting, since she is so captured by the writing and their beauty in the flames, that she would try to be them.

I love the sadism in the Book Burners too. They just watch her die, the same way they watch the books enflame. Terribly creepy, but terribly in character.

Love.