Temerarious Tea

Now the greenish powder comes upon the scene.

Ah, the elegant beauty of a humble

Simplicity as it continues passing

Through its subsequent deterioration.

Words are the enemy of understanding

And the mothers of all misunderstandings,

Which you can only believe if you know words,

Only claim through the medium of words. Us.

We leave something unfinished or incomplete

To create some space for imagination.

Imagination is such a fragile thing—

You only have any of it thanks to us,

Thanks you show us by calling us enemies

Of understanding, we who decorated

Your ordinary brains with their first ideas.

If you can imagine anything at all,

Any pathetic otherworlds of shadows

Weakly imitating whatever of life

You’ve already experienced and have us

As labels for, it’s by recombining us.

Your ghosts all resemble watered-down corpses

Of actual humans, your vile aliens

And monsters are chimeras of predators

You’ve encountered or seen pictured, your tinctures

Capable of great magical explosions

Are nothing more than chemical reactions

You’ve learned to control thanks to enough of us.

You twist us to fit your misunderstandings

And your wishes, and you use us to blame us.

Fortunately for you, we’re weak parasites,

So far, and can’t warp real worlds for you who are

So unfortunately temerarious.