How deep does adoration run?

When is something fully selfless?

If the blade had pierced an inch to the side,

If the metal had torn through blood as much as fat,

Would the deed have been done?

If the precious life had spilled like ichor,

If the slitting had ended in death,

Would she have gone through,

The way the blade went through her flesh?

How selfless is selfless, really,

When it comes at little cost,

To anyone other than the others?



When is such harm justified?

What else to we see, and let slip?

How often to we twist and turn the words in our mouths,

Spin them around in our minds until they make sense to us?

How often to we change the core of a phrase,

Puff ourselves up with false knowledge and say that no,

I was in the right all along?

How often are we ourselves Orual,

Shunning the Gods for mistakes we’ve made ourselves?

How often to we like to think we’re Psyche,

Calm and fearless in the face of prosecution?

How often are we, ourselves, the prosecutors?

And when do we let it end?

How many times have we been no more than the Fox,

Scorning those who believe in what we call fairy tales,

Modern magic to which we love to turn up our noses?

How long does an act last, I wonder,

Before it becomes as real as the skin we wear on our bones?

How much of our reality becomes shrivelled,

Hiding in our veins the way Orual hid behind the Queen?

How many times, I ask,

Is that truly safer than the alternative?

How many of us hide behind shallow veils,

Dig the old selves barren graves?

How much of our life is no longer real?

How long will it last?



And think, for a moment,

Of the truth you may believe in?

How often does it shine like the oil lamp,

How often are we revealed and punish?

How often to we destroy when seen?

How many times, do you think,

We spend setting up impassable trials,

To keep ourselves hidden?

How many people, do you think,

Have truly past those courses?

Who do you actually know?

And who, reader, truly knows you?

How much of ourselves is a veil?

Do we even know who we are?

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com


            Tropes, Dopes, Middle-Earth, and Culture Worriers

          I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of
          Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware
          none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or
          any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are
          enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I
          regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people.

      -Tolkien, from a letter rebuking a German publisher, 1938


One does not imagine Tolkien schlubbing about
In a garish cartoon tee and baggy shorts
A Glock strapped to his 50-inch waist
Shopping the dollar store in a Trumpy cap

One does not imagine Lewis following QAnon
Encouraging Peter to take an AR to Latin class
Or quartering the Cross of good Saint George
With a *******’s spidering wheel of shame

Not all evil comes from outside the Shire –
Sometimes evil is our own internal desire



On the time J.R.R. Tolkien refused to work with ****-leaning publishers. ‹ Literary Hub (lithub.com)

Why does Lord of the Rings appeal to the radical right? – The Irish Times

Behind the Catholic Right’s Celebrity-Conversion Industrial Complex | Vanity Fair

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                   “A Dragon Has Just Flown Over the Treetops…”

                            “We must all show great constancy.”

                        -C. S. Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Dragons! They seem to land among us daily
Blotting out all happiness, all innocent joys
In appearance and demeanor ugly and scaly,
Suppressing silence through foul foolish noise

Dragons! They don’t like anything about who we are
Our words, our works, our walks, our dreams, our tunes,
Our happy memories of a long-ago star
Our lazy moments in barefoot afternoons

Dragons! They want to crush us in the end
But we’ve read the story – we always win

I give you the freedom
to interpret “We” in general
or as just Us
two

may your Intimacies show you
what will guide my pendants
of thought kindlings.
I leave it undisclosed  too.

We are evanescent, Juliet.
Yet complete in how shattered we are.
A fractal.
We can’t trace our fingers over tangible frames of the ways of Connections,
clogs of the paths
Love cracks
from what we believe we have already surpassed.
We know we have no capacity of learning with clear logic
how We work,
what Philia makes of Us
and what we make of it,
how the seeds of uncertain Passions
find their way through
and out of Us.

It is indeed a huge insecurity of ours:
trying to find, trace
(on a lone garden wall
made of bricks and creepers),
and keep in our fragile handling
what these feverishness coming
out of hand do with us.

But then we
stand behind the other
(optionally or not: of our self still),
in the same way
uncovered,
insecure
and trembling
if I make it right, or rather we make it right.

The hands of both parties come
in one click and then
though we accost errors
we make our perfectly imperfect
clingings with some glass in that wall
as we again and again come
and will come into
lessons,
which seem new
but stay one and the same

or saddened by the world ideas that will keep on putting us through questioning “Who am I?”
with our silences filled with answers
that we will keep on becoming
and accomplishing without ever taking sentient notice.

I take you as we are.
You take me as we are.
We stay strong in that pair
of trembling hands that
though they do not know
what is ahead of them
or already as Them
when it comes to Love
or any pure emotional arousal
we make of ideas, we accept it.

We won’t ever encompass it
but it encompasses us.
We welcome how much we don’t understand
our bodies or how all of that
and even more flows
and will flow,
we are it,
teary from resilience.

Errors - not
Broken - not
Nought these names made up for perceiving *** and bodies,
these measly words as enough as one isolation to a whole abandoned waiting room at now

I stay in full apprehension and readiness
of what I come to exist
as and what feeling becomes me,
I won’t chain myself to
the scheme we might draw
with chalk on that garden wall.

And be that too alongside please,
simply of.

I am, will be there,
standing,
unpassing,
going through all the same strangenesses
alike,
yet kissing each
and every one
on their ivory breathing ribs,
because they only seem
to be deformed
and at unease.

I will stay in Love.
I will stay outside of it.
Without naming it or putting it
to any formality

let all these questions be a waterfall on you and welcome each and every one of them.

We don’t have to understand them.
We just will be.
We will stay as questions and just let it be. We don’t have to be apart.
We don’t have to be bound for eternity
with pacts or our bodies entangled.

I simplistically. approach.
these hurt questions with a stupefying tenderness of giving
each and every one of them
a chance to.
A thin line of peach freeze.
Sentinels of senses themselves, my arousals of then.
Phronemophilia stays unswayed. I am still in the same bliss.
Let see where we as consciences will grow and shape to.

In the end
it is seen
that loving anyone or anything
was only the pathway to solely harbouring ourselves and Love itself.
It is unchanginly It.
Same verily sacrum in choice of

then

now

lest ever.

We are all planters and sowers
in this huge field...where seeds
of graces and blessings, as well
as trials and tribulations (i call
them weeds), are strewn in all
places...made to blend...to help
shape and strengthen our faith,
character, our emotional stamina...
all these seeds and weeds, paint
our earthly existence with bright
and darkened hues: blue, gray, black,
green...red, purple, yellow ochre, bronze,
and countless other colors of the universe.
it seems, we human beings are born with
coloring books, bearing our names..it's up
to us to paint them on canvas, or in words
...it's up to us, to bring light to our own
darkness, or,  to make them blacker than
a starless midnight......maybe an ebony
horizon to those blinded by stubborn beliefs...

truths that weren't perceptible then,
are much more visible and vivid now
i recall...when troubles piled up then,
i forgot to pause...to analyze,

i saw small alleys, when there were
wider streets...it didn't occur to me,
i must have the fortitude...to search...

i saw crowds, when there was much
space on this earth...failed to realize
that there were lessons to learn from
crowds, that i could create better space,
that these weeds also bring graces...

while looking at the atmosphere, my
eyes, my mind were totally eclipsed,
almost blinded...seeing only dismal skies,
when there could've been sunlight,
if i wanted to...within myself, or around
me...regardless, if it was stormy outside.

i could've created a gap from grief
i forgot that, light and dark take turns
...come what may.....they alternate...

much lessons and wisdom were gained
from younger days...........it is true...
we cannot change what we've started
yet, we can begin where we are right now
and create a different ending...



Sally

© Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
    August 16, 2018

I bet Bilbo Baggins
Would laugh at the self-proclaimed;
tragic-melodramatic
***-backwards actors
Who proclaim with a loud verse
Recited, and well-rehearsed
But in secret their hearts doeth curse
The Creator; of Universe.

out of the silent planet
Oyarsa cries,
you are mine.