It did not burn, Alexandria–not in the way
the flame of history is said to have danced. Instead, slowly,
the hierophants stacked the lumber of words, propheysing
a path unto itself, the trodenness of the muddy earth
sloughing off of the toenails of the nobodies. The lemmings followed
one another until all the dilemmas had been written down, drunk
off of the names of people they no longer knew. Identities congealed
on the discarded bones until flesh grew underneath the maggots
of self obsession, crawling towards the cold sun. Some say
it was these muscles that unknowingly twitched their own demise,
while others claim some knowing monad grew tired of the weight
of its own being, disgusted with what it had become. Purposefully,
or not, fractals of destruction eroded slowly, then all at once,
until all that was left was a concept of a memory, red hot
and disintegrating. They could not find the ashes,
the children of the unlucky, and so, simply,
they sang.