trial of steel, chambers of mud

chiseled metal and other elements grafted

explosions of sound with very little foreplay

a sword which the eye launches, with a power of gods

who gave this bottled lightning to the breathers of air?

quiet in its perch,

the crowd tiptoes around it

they point and hiss at its portal of unbending death potential

“why was it made?”

“is the life washed away in its thunder?”

“does this finger begin it — or that one?”

Percussion, Precision, Potentates, Predation.

Pretty piles of popped out proofs and dreamt through passion.

Fear is powerful — on all sides.

They proceed to paint its sides with the fiery emblems of permanent poison.

the warrants bounce the halls, with songs of siren and gravelly gavel.

a child asks its parent:

— -is it guilty, Enseignant? Is the sentencing through?

— But yes, froshman. What did you expect? This is no pup or kit which we examine this day. Didst your sympathies go out to this parcel of steel and carbon and fury?

“Of course not, Professure. We know it is angry and it carries the sleep of demons. — — — . . only, but . . .”

“But what, L'Enfant??”

My grandfather — -

— what of him, lad?

My grandpere, he keeps the loud sword by his side at all times.

No worries, timid friend. He is a pirate, and you are of cleansed blood now, long lince enlightened from the days of his romance so many years ago.

“No,” said the child. “He is a good man yet”

— then why shouldst he carry that hand-cannon of wrath, the exploder of lives who dream not the peril in its chambers and deathly tunnels?

— there was a girl, cried forth the boy. pretty as the night is long. — they were going to hurt her ,wimpered the intelligent babe.

what is that to the trial at hand, tyke? Why are you muddying the chambers?

He made them go away, saidst the boy. He lit the fire of that telepathic baton. and they went away. every one of them.

— you are dismissed, said the judges. Cute as you be, yours is not the testimony we look for today.