Kindling
Many years ago
I saw your blackened face
As it shone by firelight
With beads of sweat
Streaking whitened paths
Through the sooty grime
As it dripped into your beard
You stood above the flames
Your features darkened
By shadows flickering
Tending to your bonfire
Watching the orange fingers
Leafing through the pages
As they turned them over, one by one
And burned them fiercely
Within the conflagration
The blasphemous words
Dangerous thoughts
And heretical teachings
Within those banished books
Made easy fuel for flames
Mere card and paper
Covers and bindings
Consumed within the smoke
Rendered down to ash
So that none might read them any more
But now your brow seems furrowed
As you wonder what to do
With all this glass and plastic
Metal and electronica
Casings and batteries
Of phones and iPads
And other hand-held gadgets
That will not catch alight
Nor burn with any purpose
This digital economy
Its airwaves alive with anarchy
Downloaded through the ether
A seditious cyberspace
That cannot be controlled
A communications spectrum
That provides its own oxygen
Requiring nothing else to Kindle
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