Narcissus

Recently I wrote a short creative piece called "Echobox" that is part poetry, part realistic fiction and part fantasy, which explored through eyes of a young boy people's interactions with video media, specifically television. It reminded me of a poem I wrote nigh on ten years ago, called "Narcissus." The poem was intended to be read while listening to a selection of music played on a solo instrument. It was part of a cycle of similar pieces I performed called, "Solipsist." This particular part of the cycle was intended for string bass, an instrument I played in my younger days but have since given up. The studio recording for this poem/music piece was, alas, lost when the laptop I used for recording suddenly ceased to operate. As such, the Solipsist album remains incomplete, with the only live performance having been recorded by a third party at extremely low fidelity and volume. In the near future (once I replace some failed studio equipment) I may reconstruct and re-record the music. For now, here is the poem.

Narcissus

Echo

That weeping echo

Lost by the water’s edge

A pale thing never heard

Except in echo

Poor weeping echo

Left forgotten,

Never known.

To peer into the cool pond

To forget man, woman,

And god (Poor echo!)

At the beckoning of Nemesis

I crept over the mossy bank

And saw peering back at me

Like a vision of poor echo’s lament

Not the beauty she sought,

But a monster!

Vicious, ugly, tormenting.

Eyes turned inward

Scowling, raging, forgetting.

Nemesis of my Nemesis.

Poor echo!

How did she come to love

One such as this, or

Did she love another,

Who came before this horrid creature?

I reach out to kill it

To end its misery and the misery it inspires

And shall make it a monument

In remembrance of horror.

As we remember

Poor weeping echo

Left forgotten,

Never known.

Echobox

Echobox.

It’s a box… that echoes, obviously

Everybody’s second voice

Second talk, second mind,

Echoes back a righteous choice

Zion! Zion! To Zion we shall go! Infidels cannot hold Zion against its rightful heirs!

Billy sat and played with his toys. Mother’s echobox was on again, firing its angry nonsense words down the hall. It seemed like it was always on, even when she slept. He wanted to close the door, but he knew if he did, he would get in trouble. She would take away the toys.

Billy… What a stupid, average, nothing name, he thought as he piled brick upon brick. Slowly the castle he held in his small mind would take its recognizable shape in the physical world. He had run out grey bricks of the correct size, and so had to fill in some gaps in the castle wall with blue and red, but he didn’t mind. He imagined that they were decorations put there by the powerful king who built the castle. He saw two of the blue bricks next to each other, and an image popped into his mind.

A wolf.

He tore down the wall and started building again. This time, the blue bricks formed an image in the wall, of a blue wolf with red eyes (formed by a few small red bricks).

No king was ever called Billy. He pulled one of the little men from his chest. He put a crown on him. William. King William Wolsfbane. He put the little king on top of the wall. He imagined the dull, brown carpet of his bedroom was an expanse of wilderness before the fortress.

The dark army of Abaz will have to get through all these wastes to assail these walls. These wastes… they are our home! William the boy put more men on the walls. These he armed with spears and axes and shields. They were smiling. Men at war do not smile, unless they are certain of victory. Abaz will destroy himself upon these walls! He cannot wrest this sacred land from us! We are the rightful heirs of the soulforge. Our blood is in everything –even the rocks are our kin.

“Billy!”

He looked up. His mother was standing at the edge of the room. How long had she been there?