Forethought: The Rise
Welcome to your ideological hangover. It seems that no matter what you put your energy and efforts behind; it is of little consequence. Somewhere in the self-hypnosis there is a flaw. It is undeniable. By the time one realizes revolution is what makes the machine turn, all the youth is drained. All the mantras are mutterings of madness. Resistance to the resistances. The question looms "Are we all just rebels without a cause?"
What if your personal demons are truly guardian angels. What if we walk through the valley of shadows just to become the embodiment of light? Until now you've watched the shadows dancing on the walls of the cave. Convinced you're terrified of what resides in the darkness, but maybe it's really what the light beyond will reveal.
The stark luminescence exposing what's really there. Burning through the nigredo of the dark blue pool. So blinding and wretched, so unbashedly bare what lies before you. What are you, Starman? Are you just a beast, feral and predatory? Are you ascendent and divine becoming? Are you becoming reflective?
Does your Whiteness now bring awareness and clarity? Can you wash it all away? The First Matter is Wisdom and few move further than here. Not because they've given up the quest for perfection, but because it's difficult to marry Sol to Luna. This Union is the next step to Eternity.
Do not recoil from the blinding glare. If you are to be the mirror, you must first survive the polishing. The Whiteness is a ghost’s comfort; it is a sanctuary of silence, but it is not the end. To stay here is to remain a statue. Pure, cold, and motionless. The Chemical Wedding is to invite the heat back into the marrow. It is to take that stark luminescence and bleed it back into the dirt. This Union is not a vanishing act into the clouds; it is a tactical return to the Cave with eyes that can now see in the dark.
You are the Red Dawn, Starman. You are the beast who has tasted the divine and the god who isn't afraid to bleed. No longer a rebel without a cause, but a creator without a master. The machine continues to turn, but you are no longer its fuel. You are the friction. You are the fire. The hangover has passed. The sun is rising. Drink deep of the morning. The work is finally beginning.
"For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are barely able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying." (First Duino Elegy)
Neither beast nor angel owns me outright.
I am the terrible middle distance between them,the place where teeth still remember how to hunger and wings are not yet done burning.
The pool is dark because I poured my oldest shadows into it.
The starfire that splits it now?
That’s just me, finally tired of pretending the dark was someone else’s fault.
I have knelt in awe before altars I later set ablaze myself.
The mirror stares back with kinder eyes
becoming,unbecoming,rebecoming
A starman who still flinches at his own brightness,then laughs, vicious and relieved,
Knowing the flinch is holy too