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second flooding of Megiddo
I've got rain
No words
No fancy maledictions
uneven drips against
my inner scream
Out in the valley
gathering armies
obscured by smoky haze
brightly polished armor
weaponry clean
beauteously shines
stars behind dark clouds
No roots to cling to
flood water rises
drowns fire, air, ability to
speak of sorrow
Ashes
fall unevenly
through seeping valley
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Jul/24/2010, 2:01 pm
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Re: second flooding of Megiddo
Whoa! A poem taking on the last and final battle? Taking on Armageddon? This takes guts.
As the poem stands it is not working for me, being way too reliant on referentials. It is in need of more, much more fleshing out. But as idea I am kind of blown away.
Tere
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Jul/24/2010, 7:52 pm
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Re: second flooding of Megiddo
Hi, Libra,
Yes, what a huge idea, and expansion would open out the poem. The first line is welcoming and seems kind of casual, and then "scream" doesn't quite follow. Maybe what's needed here is a dramatic structure so the poem can build an ominous mood before the flood?
"beauteously" doesn't work for me -- too "poetic" I guess.
No harm and maybe some benefit in breaking the spare lines into stanzas if you want.
Now I have to go look up Megiddo. I'm learning a lot from poems like yours.
Take care,
Auto
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Jul/25/2010, 2:13 am
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Re: second flooding of Megiddo
Hi, Libra,
I did look up Megiddo, but no luck with the flood ref. If you feel like explaining the poem, I'd love to hear it.
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Jul/25/2010, 2:25 am
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Re: second flooding of Megiddo
This is meant to be not so much the final battle as the weary act of an alternative deity overwhelmed by the sorrow emanating from Yahweh's wars.
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Jul/25/2010, 4:48 pm
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Re: second flooding of Megiddo
I feel I should have gotten that. Perspective now comes through. As does the immense sorrow. Note to self: spend more slow time with the poem before reacting.
Tere
Last edited by Terreson, Jul/25/2010, 5:40 pm
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Jul/25/2010, 5:39 pm
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Re: second flooding of Megiddo
Alas, I still don't get it. Alternative deity? Yahweh's wars? Is this in the bible someplace?
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Jul/25/2010, 6:06 pm
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Re: second flooding of Megiddo
Well, I can't speak for Libramoon, or for the poem's intentions, but I can point out that before Yayweh was a God coming out of the desert he was a Consort/Lover to the Great Mother in an earlier substrate of Levant religious practices. And in a sense the whole story is in the Bible's Old Testament...in subtext. The ancient Isrealites constant warring with the Philistines had as much to do with two competing religious orientations as it had to do with territoreal disputes. A close reading of the Book of Judges especially brings out the cultural context of the dispute. Perhaps the Samson stories most of all, he who was particularly attracted to Philistine high priestesses, devotees of the goddess of fertility and who, by practice, tended to be holy prostitutes. The story of Adam's first wife also comes to mind, not in the Bible but in the ancient Hebrew mystical tradition. Her name was Lillith. Adam divorced her. It seems she refused to relinquish, so to speak, the on-top position. I've always thought of the origins of ancient Hebrew religion as a kind of palace revolution against a matri-focal relious sense, what was clearly in place in the Levant long before Semitic tribes invaded at around 1,000 BC.
Tere
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Jul/25/2010, 6:45 pm
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Re: second flooding of Megiddo
Thanks, Tere, for not speaking for me so eloquently. You certainly covered the biblical reference better than I could have. Where did you get this knowledge? Are you a religious scholar?
The first person singular in the poem is not of biblical origin (so far as I know), but of my imagination. She is very old and weary of Yahweh's violent play on the field of Earth. The first flood He sent out in anger against the people who would not properly obey Him. This is not the second flood, sent not in anger but in sorrow. Megiddo was (if I am remembering correctly) a natural meeting point of armies in the ancient Middle East.
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Jul/25/2010, 11:04 pm
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Re: second flooding of Megiddo
Thanks back at you, Libra. I am working up to doing a series of poems involving Biblical punk rockers, so to speak. Salome I got down. The Magdelene too. And the Wandering Jew. Your Megiddo poem fits my mood. Megiddo, by the way, is a valley, a natural pass for armies looking to travel back and forth. No wonder early Christians would have seen it as the site for battle. It often was. It took me a day or so but I got the fit of your poem. From Astarte in Sumeria to Isis in Egypt there might have been tears shed, metaphorically speaking of course.
Tere
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Jul/26/2010, 12:16 am
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Re: second flooding of Megiddo
Hi Laurie,
When I first read the poem, I did not know what Megiddo was, but what came through to me was the weary tone and a certain big picture detachment I couldn't quite put my finger on. Your explanation helped pull the poem into focus. If you could work that bit about "an alternative deity overwhelmed by the sorrow emanating from Yahweh's wars" into the poem somehow, I think that would help orient a slow reader like me.
I agree with Auto about "beauteously" not working and about the suggestion to consider a few stanza breaks. I'm not sure you need "of sorrow." I think the sorrow comes through in the imagery you've used at the end. FWIW, the line "my inner scream" made me think of Munch's painting "The Scream." Googling, I discovered:
Munch wrote of how the painting came to be:
I was walking down the road with two friends when the sun set; suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence, feeling unspeakably tired. Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous, infinite scream of nature.
He later described the personal anguish behind the painting, “for several years I was almost mad…You know my picture, ‘’The Scream?’’ I was stretched to the limit—nature was screaming in my blood… After that I gave up hope ever of being able to love again.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edvard_Munch
That probably isn't what you had in mind, but "the enormous, infinite scream of nature" fits with my reading of the poem in the context you have described.
I like the way you have tackled this "huge" topic and given a personal voice to an ancient feminine diety.
Last edited by Katlin, Jul/30/2010, 4:53 pm
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Jul/28/2010, 8:07 pm
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