amass riches, that no sycophant would
wish to desire,
   let alone consider fractions
of the riches of solomon's mines -
that these be riches,
   no universality of worth my touch;
for there are transcendental
riches, you can amass -
       that read into the minds of
particular men, the non-sycophants,
the seemingly "idle" eccentrics -
who clutter their riches
without ever writing a catalogue
of them being amassed within
their possession...
                    the diamond in the rough
of antiques...
    the history beyond human deeds,
the history bound to that of
passing inanimate to animate to
animate to solidified by
a courtesy of a museum's "lampoon"...
   institutional or rather opposed to
it, by whatever demand,
  or as demand states:
the ever-loosened metaphor
guiding remnants of authentic
                                       association
between a man's narrative
long ago burried with name and epitaph
and a life's span into a cheap
stone...
               and the narrative of
the thing handled that
reaches status king in silk,
from its origin as pauper in mud...
only amass riches in this world
that have no universal meaning -
    only an insignia deciphered by you alone,
forgetting the worth of signature,
only this:
    beyond flesh and bone,
  toward the man with sight braille
of feeling the coarse feel of
an ancient page of script...
             there are riches in this world
that bypass, i even dare spy
on the sycophantic cohort of
   those easily duped by shortcuts
of missing efforts, where
authentic appreciation reigns...
       there are riches in this world,
far beyond what the magpie steals,
namely silver spoons...
    there are riches beyond
the bait of the magpie,
   there is so much more beyond
the silver spoon...
                     there's the fire in books,
that's the word...
           and it simply yearns
for the breath of your eyes
             to read it, to fuel it,
  to perpetuate it...
   to redeem the once fern infested,
wild strawberry bedding of the forest,
turned into a bog infested with
stench and mosquistos,
  to be revived to a moisture of
eye-watering     reseda-pine green;
the worth of books
became clear,
        how sad...
   for all the books burned in 1933...
    there's only one crucifix burning to
                                    equally "lament".