She left me a voicemail this morning, Polyhymnia did.
I spent a dozen decisions just to buy the courage to listen
She says she wants all the least perfect words
hazy amoebas of sound that stir
only the impression of an idea
four parts mystery to each part clarity
I think she wants us both mad
howling inappropriate wisdoms at the moon
And she'll burn me as I hunt
She bids me clothe her in the finest rags and tatters
that her beautiful desolation
can colonize us all
“Take all the thoughts too great to fit in sentences
and build me a new god!
Give a name to the intangible awe
So I can shudder at the sound of it
shudder before the enormity
of all that we understand
but can't describe."
And she'll burn me as I flounder in the mist
I know why she keeps demanding new deities, Polyhymnia.
Not for worship, these fresh gestalts of the barely knowable!
No, she wants the skin of beasts we know
Stretched taut across the abysses we know not.
She loves what can be killed and dissected
She builds trampolines and slingshots
from the stolen ligaments of befriended monsters
and she bids us labour in the tensions she has commissioned
until epiphany snaps our mind
and we hurtle, screaming Eurekas
through a cosmos of revelation.
and how gloriously,
how gloriously!
she will burn me when my hunt is complete
Gods are for dissection
and she makes scalpels of us all
