The Prize
Eric Bonholtzer
The book opens of an eldritch lore
Whispered phrases clipped, choked.
A mahogany desk, the bent rising floor
Falls away, trembles beneath mud soaked boots.
Is this the prize?
Victorian turncoats of any age huddle
Clinging as if for warmth around knowledge
That forbidden eve that made atoms tremble
The pages weathered, yellowed, gray, angry and cold.
Is this the prize for so long excavation?
Gathered as Manhattanites must have above their creation
A child bringing his first adult magazine to school to share
Words, lines of destruction, tethering reality, self congratulatory flagellation
As sentences pass lips, in tongues of lore, languages long since lost
Upon the ears of man
Perhaps there is a reason things are better left uncovered
Excavation and Extinction share many of the same rhythms
Conjure voices, yet there is no calamity, no apocalypse
No tearing asunder of boundaries never to be torn. Nothing.
Yet still words pass by impassive lips,
Reading what could have once been a symbol diary,
Hidden for all time
What they had thought, with their elegant robes and supplicating moans
And painted faces becoming just words
Trapped for time, a book, a tome, a stone
An artifact, a relic.
There are better books out there
The book of the dead cannot sever time
But marks a milestone like voices,
Like chants, of hopeful excavations of a cold wind and a star filled sky
