[28 April 2024 edit: removing paywall since, well, I only had a small part in bringing this one into the world]
Why go west? Fuck those fools. I’ll lick these stones, I’ll stick this pig, crackle it’s skin, I’ll taste my hunger. They’ll climb mountains Misty and Blue, they’ll lose themselves and all because some dickhead daemon showed. “Come, I know a way!” That’s all it takes? They left in droves; few faithful left. We gathered their shit, they ain’t bereft. More for me: I’m the new chief. We piled the rest, we set it alight, we burned the past, we got it right. Staying put’s the plan, and Darkness became Light.
Alex, of matemates and Slant & Tangent fame (god, what brilliant names that say it all when it comes to his genius with languages!) has hours-long conversations about Tolkien lore and Middle-earth history with me. We get a bit nutty about it; we both love Tolkien so much and have approximate knowledge of everything to be found in The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and The History of Middle-earth. You can listen in on those conversations and many others besides in Slant & Tangent. At some point.
On one such occasion of a conversation, I threw down the proverbial poetry-prompt gauntlet and challenged both of us to write a poem from the perspective of an early member of the Self-cursed, the Night-fearers. If only to play with words and story. It was a surprising throw-down for me since embodying (“embodying”) another voice in my writing is something of a challenge. I feel locked in my Self when I write—so much of it is therapeutic self-talk so I can self-overhear myself. I’m sure there is a psychoanalytic name for that; if you know, throw it in the comments.
I sit down to write—I may, in point of fact, be walking and talking, but I’ll say “I sit down”—and lo!, a character walks through the door. I have no idea who this guy is, but when I opened my imagination to the early Men of Middle-earth, to the ones who remained behind after the First Sun rose and did not follow the gloaming into Beleriand, he’s who showed. And his voice just came out of me. It was brash, a bit caustic, a little like taking a scouring pad scrape-scrapping across your skin. Looking at this weeks later, he seems like a Middle-earth incel, some kind of rakish misanthrope carrying his own pain that he’s willing to keep inflicting back on the world.
It’s even more fun to read aloud (isn’t everything?)!
Thanks much, Alexandru Ichim. I’m a bit less stuck now.
Alex is knee-deep in being human and doing genius-foolish things like pursuing an undergraduate degree in Modern Literature, so you should subscribe to his newsletter (below) and watch it all unfold!
The photo was perfectly matched to this “dark” poetry.