the warrior survives, hides,
between the pillars
of low and high tides.
the sea rages denial
inside an empty shell –
iron red-hot courses
in martian veins,
with quicksilver wings
its mercurial elements
shift, love, engage;
and who, eros, are thee?
to force atlas over
my shoulders
the wolf father hearkens
the ocean mother beckons
howling in waves the earth
my warrior’s garden,
and prays his king’s alive
Everything is words now. I see them scrolling down the walls
like the matrix. Every flower efflorescing; every bird swooping into the eaves
and chirping before sunrise; every smile and touch; each fragile-as-glass moment,
mercurial as the Oregon spring, translates into a babel-spring of kaleidoscope
diction that twists as I shift the scene.
And nothing is plain, the world sings a chorus of curious
words, like the opening scene of the Silmarillion. I understand little of this
logos. Brent Weeks, a bestselling author wrote (tweeted):
If, while puking, you
consider what words would properly describe what you're feeling... you're a
writer.
Sometime this is me, though my skill can leave the
descriptions wanting. I still want to
write all the words, and fill my journal with meaningless swaths of them. While
washing my hands just now, I contemplating how rubbing a bar of soap was like
rubbing a religious icon, hoping the relic will impart its healing through its,
and our, touch. I also contemplated the ill-advised pun using the word “lye”
and dredging up some iconography wit, but decided against it.
Listening to the sermon this morning, I’m balancing each
sentence spoken, tasting it as a delicacy – does it have the right sauces,
spices, panache? The message was moving, and well spoken, this morning, and
also of great importance. EM is an acupuncturist of words, needling the nerves
with wisdom, wit, and an eagle’s eye for uncomfortable Biblical passages worth disassembling
and putting back together.
Anyone who does not
love does not know God, because God is love. (1 John 4:8)
We tackled 1 John 4, and among the verses of love, so customary
we blithely read them now, there is this barb, like glass in the cake. And
hearing this, we scramble for a way out, as a mouse hearing the shrieking owl,
knowing our falling short.
We’ve all been hurt, at some point or another. Some numb the
darkness down, tying it like Loki into our guts where it rumbles with hurt as
our growing shame drips acid on the face of our fears and pains. Some explode –
it’s fight or flight – and erupt in the face of offense, ever prepared for a
fight. Internalize or externalize, at the end, we must still love.
I’m still reading Iron John, a book about the masculine and
the mythical journey of masculine holistic life through the fable called,
unsurprisingly, Iron John. Today, the passage was on the warrior, and I’m
trying to bind everything I discover into a coherent whole, but as with the
words, sometimes it seems like shattered stained-glass windows scattered across
the hole of night.
Then the voices of the
Ainur, like unto harps and lutes, and pipes and trumpets, and viols and organs,
and like unto countless choirs singing with words, began to fashipn the theme
of Iluvatar to a great music; and a sound arose of endless interchanging
melodies woven in harmony that passed beyond hearing into the depths and into
the heights, and the places of the dwelling of Iluvatar were filled to
overflowing, and the music and the echo of the music went out into the Void,
and it was not void.
(Tolkien :
Silmarillion)
http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/05/the-king-the-warrior/
http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/05/the-king-the-warrior/
