Golem Grand

Do you not think it strange

That people-watching and watching people

Are the same thing?

How do you know when someone is loud

If no one is part of a crowd?

Now, I want to know what people are made of

But be careful about what I mean.

Not names, not dreams, nor the pain they can spare

Skip all that about kinds of vim

I’m talking about kinds of limb.

Are people made out of paper?

Are they thin, torn, easily burned?

Are they publishable, with first name rights?

Perhaps people are the dragons of the press,

With claws and wings and breath of darkness.

Could you find a person made of plastic?

After all, there are many kinds of extraction.

Speak not of magazines, make-up, trends.

But suppose a polyethylene soul.

What would they call control?

Some people, I think, are made of tape.

Quick to stick, but tear it off a few times

And see how it softens its grip.

Short might be such a life

Whether borne of calm or strife

The most frightful ones are made of smoke.

These people follow every wind.

They’ll find their way into your lungs.

The danger here is not a question of trust,

But because they do not understand “must.”

Think of a construct of acid.

This, too, is a person to be found.

Some forms of paper are litmus.

People of acid are difficult to trace

They are made of the battles they face.

An obvious choice is glass.

These can be sharp for many reasons.

They come in every shape, size, colour.

Some are mirrors, shards, beads.

They can be broken by their needs.

There have been so many mistakes.

Trying to make people of simple things.

Rock, clay, water, wood, or metal.

We often begin in the ground.

But not every music is sound.

So let us try to build someone new.

How, you ask, would we begin?

Let’s stop trying to undo the past.

For that is a vengeance wasted

In a life you have never tasted.

Can we try starlight?

Ah, but that is another mistake.

Hope is an odd kind of arrogance.

Emptiness is the meaning of the sky

But to call that a hunger is a lie.

All right, then, closer to home.

There is one thing that people have found

Is loved by everyone, everywhere, and more.

And that is the dedication to fire.

Yes, that is where our need is dire.