Books

Stop. Just think of all the books. Try and picture them: all those fucking books. They've been printed. And then what? How many of them will go unread? Do you not feel this feeling of the shadow of all the printed books? They outnumber us by the tens. They're everywhere: sure, in the libraries but that's safe, right? They're in the homes though, on the street corner, in the shops. Everywhere, these sad, lonely creatures. Unread books. Just picture them, really try and feel the cover, the spine, unopened. The pages crisp from misuse.

Umberto Eco is a bastard. He says the book will never die. Well, gee, thanks. Have you ever thought about the books? Stuck, like our half-dead elderly, kept alive by the machines of maybe-someone-will-read-me. But no. They won't. Not because they don't read (which we don't) but because there's so many of you. You're like pandas in reverse: some fucked up genetics have screwed your reproduction system and you can't fucking stop. Just stop. Stop writing yourselves, stop pollinating our thoughts, stop incubating in our shadows. Stop.

Just think of all the books. Really try and think about them.

And when you're done, you'll just move on. Your hands might touch them but your minds are long past. The words are unspoken, maybe that's the hardest part. Think of being a book, having all those words fucking burning in your stomach. And you want to speak them, to spit them, to vomit them, and the only way you can do that is with this alien, this stranger, called Man. And Man? He looks away. And you're alone, together with all these "friends", all these "relatives", forced upon you by the virtue of ink and page and letters and all that fucked up shit you didn't even ask for. Fuck, just think of the books!

Books. What will become of them? God, I hope they die. God? The God of Books. What a pathetic creature that must be, even more so than the God of Man. A library card perhaps, floating in the discarded corridors of the cosmos. Meandering about, moping, trying to read his children, to open his children to Man, to open Man to his children. But his voice is parched, is parchment, the throat is filled with ink, the Blood of his children. And there's probably a fucked up, reverse eucharist, since the God of Man can't keep out of anything. "Hoc est verbum", and the bread turns to words and the wine turns to the ink and my tears are still tears. Weeping for the books.