this One will live yet
caught between the Stirring and the Stinger
which smothers Will and curdles Self.
life down here only frozen now, between
crawling outer skin and smouldering inner depths.
until the burning rage erupts with primal force
from darkest night where the king turned tyrant
survives the mare of being hidden in denial
cursed to skulk as ugly shadow.
ever restless never sleeping. fiercely chewing
rotting bones. to drink but putrid soup of unlived life.
pushed out of sight, forced deeper down than ice.
you might think him having died, forgotten.
but, oh Stinger, beware: this One will live yet
as a Phoenix and burn you with its fiery hunger.
the more you itch, the more it scratches.
the more you sting, the more it stirs.
I wrote this piece while working on The Boy Jumps Ship. It helped me keep focused on and distil the essential drama, narrowed down to the personified dynamics of the Stinger and the Stirring; the former representing the outer manipulating and abusing force of the Motherhead and her faithful word-serpents in the sea, the latter representing the Boy’s fragile but growing inner life affirming forces.
My own direct experience is that such abuse leads to a hidden life and the repeated creation of relationship dynamics which recreate the cycle until one’s suffering leads to consciousness, enough to emerge. Such emergence though, in my case, has not manifested through an effort of will. Will has only ever got me so far has my unconscious drivers would only trip me up again and again. A different order of magnitude of insight was necessary to bring lasting change. Until then, occasional outbursts of anger would bridge the inner and the outer life as I rebelled against my sense of denial, real or imagined.
