Electoral College/Solstice—New Murfin Verse

What if the Solstice beacon fails?

Maybe it was a sleepless night.  Maybe the relentless and nightmarish news.  Just yesterday the desperate fantasies of legions were smashed when the Electoral College in all of it Constitutional Grandeur met in the several states and duly anointed a monster as our next President.  Never has defeat seemed more utter and crushing.  Maybe it’s because of a quote I read a few days ago in some article purporting to be from an Afghan Islamic Jihadist a few years ago.  It went something like this, paraphrased from memory.

All of your western culture of late has been filled with books and movies about small bands of heroes in a seemingly hopeless rebellion against an all powerful and technologically superior alien force.  You don’t see, that is us and you are the alien empire.

Maybe it’s because I caught part of the Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Claude Raines, and Basil Rathbone on TMC this weekend.  Or because someone brought up J.R.R. Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings books in a semi-philosophic conversation the other day.  Or because I am as excited as a pimply-faced nerd over plans to see Rogue One: A Star Wars Story with my daughter Maureen over the holidays.

What ever it was, it erupted in the middle of the night necessitating a dash to the computer with the same urgency as a simultaneous bout of diarrhea had sent me scrambling to the can.

Face the Darkness and the Monsters....make our own epic.

Electoral College/Solstice

December 2016

What if this time the fading Sun

            does not heed the beacon fires,

            the prayer pyres,

            the incantations,

            the invocations? 

What if a conclave of warlocks

            and necromancers

            have found a new God

            and armies

            more powerful

            than the Light?

What if day by day the new God

            consumes the Sun

            and all upon it shines

            until Darkness is total?

           

Then, my friends,

            we take up our yew bows

            and from the fastness

            of the deepest, darkest forests,

            light the eternal night

            with our flaming arrows.

We gather kindling and fuel

            far and wide,

            haul it stealthily

            to the foremost alp

            and bide our time.

We seek out the allies

            from the corners

            of the gloom shrouded earth,

            learn alien tongues,

            make brothers and sisters

            of strangers,

            build leagues of comrades.

We find new prayers,

            we fashion with our own hands

            new amulets, totems, and fetishes,

            forge new singing swords,

            invent our own magic.

We carry in our hearts

            the sure knowledge

            that no darkness

            can ever be truly eternal,

            no god or demon can survive

            if we no longer give him

            power over our imagination.

Now has come the time, my friends,

            to set out in our own

            epic saga.

Take heart and make it so.

—Patrick Murfin