Closing Doors at Alexandria

Libraries are temporary

portals of light

bookending dark ages.

Enlightenment warms cold aisles

with love and the egos of genius

finely crafted formulas

the only approaches to governance

books of screws

numbers with no end

histories of the uncreated.

A cup of coffee will enhance

so many things have come before.

Marble columns

burst like a tooth

in an iron fist  

and the doors fall off  

leaving nasty kids  

to piss upon the pages.  

The elders die.  

The purists erase. 

The money goes away. 

For centuries of silence. 

Then some poor prophet gets a notion, gets  

illuminated by the half-burnt pages  

of truths so pious 

the decadents laughingly regard

the bones of beaten enemies 

to illuminated words  

a prophet passes wandering--truths  

enlivened by the act  

of piecing it together 

under the blank eyes of his owner 

and because that vision is beautiful 

or the suffering too unbearable 

or just because Earth must molt 

like some disgusting arthropod 

the library reappears.  

A new text is born from these actions

A spider hangs in the sun.

Perhaps here 

perhaps not there. Perhaps a back door  

is open to the cunning  

conquistador. 

Everyone except pornographer  

or pyrophile  

is welcome.

We call this portal Alexandria.

It is closing time now.  

Say good night quietly. Librarians  

really are no match for arsonists. 

And arsonists no match 

for diligent librarians.