Innovator in Silence

A kingpin has a fated meeting with opportunity.

The Innovator stood upon the shore of silence

Inauspiciously he began a proclamation
Of salt and sand and foam and bile
And all this time, oil churned above
And the intestines of what he called men began to turn sick and foul
A beautiful machine regurgitated fetid black spears of industry

Inevitably these javelins sought the very bottom of the Silence
Penetrating its womanhood,
With terrible spires that waltzed and colonized down in the ink black.

Innovator wheeled on and embraced the machine,
A machine calling itself Human,
And with the muscle and bones
Brought this hideous creature to heel
Animal when whispered: evil,
So innovator removed this thing

Down into Silence humanity went
Shepherded by a metal faced man,
Augmented yet not incorporated
He followed the terrible black spires
With sand made invisible
With a skeleton of iron
Under great forge, and infinite tale of duress
The Silence broke

As silence befell humanity like waves
Humanity befell the silence like storm
An anthill but antless
Humans without humanity
The oligarchy of iron and glass

Oroboros banks with pillars that twisted like putrid rubber
Devouring themselves and encircling the not-humans
Leviathans, cast in black steel and ferocity
The will of Innovator set loose
The First Things met with them

The first things had been very much like the last
Resembling like gravestones a memory of
Animals, is what they had been

Innovator wasn’t dissuaded.
His horde, manipulated, persuaded
Royal dogs
Collars in oxygen, tied beneath their chins
These men were not-men.

A word challenged great Innovator, resting in a glen of iron trees
A loving word that cried with falsetto a desperate memory
Memories of humanity plagued him
What had the Silence done?
Great Glass, an angel, great Seraphim, this too would break

Innovator was elderly
A geriatric chimp skulking beneath endless blue
With grand ideas about what things had been
With grander still ideas of what they must be
He had the emotion of stones,
And the love of flies,
and the importance of neither
Silence spoke to him, in deafening quiet, unbearably inaudible,
That he was to die in this place
And his great crime undone

It was prophecy
A prophecy his stomach could believe
It knotted itself into hands and took ink to his gray brain
Paranoia became his lungs, fear became his heart, and pain his very soul

What had he and them lost in the Silence?
Or was this victory over it?
Seventy seven great cities with gilded letters
Lights and sounds,
Perhaps music had been the enemy,
If not poetry,
If not a theatre,
If not a quill,
If not a hand,
If not a thought

And so a mind
A mind was the enemy of Innovators kin,
It moated and dungeoned them,
So he had to set it free
And on the last day of the year,
In small clothes,
Dawn,
A cylinder of lead made an odyssey through his skull
The Innovator was mapped against the wall
Gray and crimson
In a language none could read,
Yet all could grieve.

Once again, an Innovator would stand on blood washed shores,
And look down into the Silence
And he would wonder.