job and frankenstein

Let change be, then, the thing you control, Phlogiston, spiritus sancti The reverence of which will let it flow within your own will.

Let your Kategoria explain the universe, And once it is taken to be, of course it does. And where will they go who try to gainsay it? The predicament was always in how to keep what you have built, And where to put what will not be put.

I cannot but wonder how you must have felt, You, layers of lodestones, founders of Connotation, Smiths of the words that I speak my spells in, Basalt under seas in whose layers I founder.

And if you could not explain me, magicians, (The last ones they speak of, for the rest must have been ordinary folk Or else subsumed by your History) Why did you try?

You do not have the test that would reveal my nature, Being neither lead nor gold, Being but a single fleck of spray in the foam of retreat Of men, searching for salt for their mouths, and a world Big enough to hold their souls, And for the lies in gold they all told each other, and the lies in pepper Still told by the depths of our whispering minds.

My blood is neither fire nor water, neither earth nor air, My blood is not happiness, nor contentment, nor bravery. My blood is not there to fill another bag of blood That empties itself down my legs at the full moon Not pure, nor exalted, nor ancient, nor other. It will not stay liquid, and will only cohere if you haven't used a sharp enough knife in the drawing, Or if I rub at the wound. It will not behave how you tell it, and your Praedicamenta, Though two thousand years old, cannot predict it: Thus, has failed us.

Stitch me together, then, after the fact, or create me out of what you can find piecemeal Carve away the parts that seem not to work, and call the shape left "what could be done" Consign the indescribable to circumstance Lock it away in the closet named Sacred And revere the door.

And if I ask, Why died I not In that Womb Why form this bag of blood at all and put a soul in it If this is all you have to offer? Wherefore was light given to this Half-formed (Rent apart, but oh, we cannot speak these things, for the lodestones would crumble, and language turn to dust in our mouths) Monstrosity If you could not offer it freedom And could neither offer peace?

Turn your faces, while I Pull myself together, But watch your altar, for the magicians that wrought it Are my ancestors And their Works and their Words are inadequate to me.