574. A GREAT WEAPON

A GREAT WEAPON
('The necessary musics of a needed age')
To be used right a great weapon should
be used on a great battlefield. Thus, (saith
the Lord?) I have dominion over you...
(You know and I know that story holds no water).
There's nothing great about living like this:
a sorcerer's jackboot stomping down, the
bad hands of an apprentice making rookie
mistakes, the liquid vehicle of a bad gland
dispensing all that semen.
-
When I was 9, a great thing happened to me:
looking up to the awesome sky I saw five thousand
1950's stars blinking on high and every one, in an
unwavering path, heading straight for an ending
already foretold. The man with the arrow, some
celestial archer, bent down to lift me up. I was
fearsome and proud, deftly traveling through the
ages of time - something Man would call it anyway.
He offered me a plug. I took it. In it, he said, were
held all the secrets of the cosmos.
-
When I came back down, he was gone, and I
was, somehow in a slightly different place.
Every measurement and distance,
slightly changed, amounted
to completely new things.
The universe sang on
the ground, with, he'd
said, the necessary
musics of a
needed age.