grease hymn
Wild Flower of the Monkey King
A wild flower flickered in the Monkey King's palm—small as proof, loud as a crown He taught it tricks of wind and riddle-speech, to cart the dusk and tumble kingdoms down Its petals rewrote maps: veins as poems, each fold a compass that makes old borders frown So from that stubborn bloom a new legend grew, stitching history to song and earning its own renown
The bloom began to inventory the impossible: receipts for storms, a ledger of vanished streets and small apologies It listed a moon with pockets, a compass that read which childhood you'd be tomorrow, a church spattered in origami birds Rivers were filed under "waiting," mountains cataloged by the taste of their shadows, borders stamped with lullaby signatures The Monkey King watched the list sign
The ledger swelled into a directory of losses, each entry a bell sunk in tissue and paper, It named a dock that forgot nightly arguments, a bakery whose ovens cooled with someone's name, a bridge that grew mute, Petals folded over the margins like fingers pressing a pulse that refuses to stop, At each entry the bloom let fall the same quiet: we remember The Monkey King bowed his shadow to the page
Towers bound their throats in cloth; the hours arrived like small, cautious ghosts, Each absent tongue of bronze logged in the bloom's margins, a silence given name and seal, Neighbors traded watches for footsteps, measuring noon by the scrape of sandals on stone, The Monkey King laid a coin upon the ledger; the city's hush folded into a new, inviolable column.
He cradled the bloom against a palm of brass and prayer, anchoring tendons of wire to its stem; Petals were patient springs, wound to the Monkey King's cadence, each fold clicking into a taught rhythm. Benches inhaled; ovens hiccupped a measured steam; a bridge coughed the silence into piston-timed syllables. The ledger's margins began to flutter—tiny electromechanical heartbeats cataloguing who,,
Rust mapped itself into letters along the bloom's brass calyx, each flake a coordinate to salvage The Monkey King plunged a greased palm into gears beneath the petals, steadying teeth that once only pointed laws He stitched copper wire with ribboned gauze, swapped crowns for wrenches, and taught the city to hum under new hinges The ledger took grease-stamped annotations—bolts replaced, seamssealed
He drew a rag like a prayer and fed the bloom a slow, savoring oil, Neighbors formed a ring, palms stained amber, their fingered amulets turned bolts as if counting beads, Each hinge exhaled a small secret; benches clicked awake and the bridge coughed a punctual laugh, At dusk they anointed the ledger's spine; names slid back into throats, lubricated to speak again.
They cupped stained hands and intoned an oil-made liturgy, turning wrenches into vowels, Springs laughed open; bridges unclenched, ovens exhaled proof into the dusk, The ledger, full of mended tongues, folded like an answered map; each petal latched a name into the quiet, The Monkey King laid down his wrench and palm; the bloom cooled into a map and the city put on its voice like a ring.
— The End —