The Idea of Ideas

That's me, the hidden assailant, springing out from nowhere, knife in hand. Throat-grabbing, reverse-thief, sidling up with a whisper. "Feel that? The steel of me? The gist of me? The nib-driven tip to draw a  bead of blood with?"

That's me, the spine-scraper, the eye-widener, the glimpse of a more thorough pain. "A wish is a promise," I say, glove-to-mouth. Yours alone to treadle on the whetstone of your mind with. To shape and hone till sparks fly from your eyes and feed the greedy forge. This blade, irreducibly fine, the keenest hum to drown out all the grinding, planar apathy of mankind.

Extrude from me a scimitar edge, and craft from that a jewelled hilt so I swish like a sword men feel honoured to fall on. Make me so much more than the crude shank that I was born of. Slice well, cut clean, let them yield to its point as meat on the skewer, as maidenheads violated, as shoals divided by native cunning. Use my lethality to make yourself prescient. Swash and buckle or flash hard for tiny nicks. I don't care, only don't squander me. I'm an idea. No-one need say 'what's the point?' I'm the point. Use me. Use it. Open a vein somewhere. Flay something's hide.

Or make of me a feather to tickle the unwary, make me a staff to herd sheep with. Herd and tickle till they beg 'no mas'. Preach and teach till their faces bleed and chalk dust hangs in their minds. I don't care, and neither am I selective; to tramp and poet akin, I'm just an idea, a wisp, an embodiment, a blueprint, a template, spelled from the ether by thoughts and words. I don't care for you, only that you don't squander me. I might not come this way again for a long time again. If ever.