The Librarian

Murderer. Swinging your jerrycan.

Whistling with your forged confidence.

Prometheus did not offer up his liver

daily, nightly for this sacrilege.

Eve watches you from the garden

furious you refused to say farewell.

Occupied, gaslighting the archives.

Biographies ride by on a conveyor belt.

Scanning the cover of one I held.

you laughed. I know all that.

A Shakespearean sonnet could not pierce

your blindness. Willingly illiterate,

Alexandrian scrolls torched to ash.

Volumes never to be recouped.

Thousands of diamonds snatched

from humanity. Caesar's unforgivable sin.

Aren't you a Julius too? A Julie, perhaps?

Emperor, Empress, all shall bow before you.

Do not be offended. You are in good company

with the savages. Piling books high.

Roasting virtue, the church. Renouncing progress,

monarchies. Denouncing civility, school boards,

Nazis. So toss your kerosene on the collections

the prose and poetry. You will never be done.

Force feeding children, until they choke,

til they explode. Butcher of the 21st century.

Siphoning the fuel you use like a tick

hiding among the dog ears. Bring down our ancestry.

Pages of fiction, science, philosophy, all the rest.

The race's summed up knowledge and experience.

Wax will drip on you while the books burn

with your fake wings and your fake life.

Curate your story, edit the headlines.

May the fumes consume you when you light the match.