In the introduction to The Tolkien Reader Peter Beagle commented that should Frodo, Aragorn and co. have failed, and Sauron had total dominion over Middle Earth, Tom Bombadil would have been the last to fall. I'm not sure of the textual basis for this but it got me wondering what that would look like.
If I was a true Tolkienite I would have written this in some obscure Anglo-Saxon meter but I'm not so I didn't. Call it fan-fiction if you want, I don't really care. Tolkien left too many undeveloped areas to justify the creation an entirely new epic; in other words, if this is fan fiction so is the Aeneid.
The Death of Tom Bombadil
Bombadil is going to war. He has taken up his wood-ax and is shaping it upon ground stone. From hardest ironwood he has hewn himself a sturdy shield and from his mantelpiece his has taken a mighty halberd, gift from some ancient Dwarven king. He is garbing himself in leather and tying his hair and beard into braids. For Melkor had come back through the doors of night and all the earth has hearkened to him.
No elven lord now stands to mar him nor elven maiden to bind him with sleep. No mountain kings to withstand the fiery assault of his dragons nor tree herders to bring the waters down upon his citadel. From the deepest pits his Balrogs have awoken and from the withered heath his wyrms descend. His orcs and trolls were hunted from the earth but men now people the ranks of his host. Men of every land and tongue to fight for the author of all evil. And so old Tom girds himself for battle and, having sent Goldberry west to the halls of Tulkas, prepares his home of the coming of the enemy.
About his lands he casts a mighty enchantment so that no fires will burn and among the trees many traps he lays, pits and springs and wires to dispatch the unwary. He teaches the streams to swallow up any who step even a little into their waters and the badgers to haul trespassers below into their dens and slay them with their own knives. Old Man Willow needs no instruction.
For himself Tom takes up his weapons, ax, halberd and iron-shod stave, and seems to be on all paths at once, patrolling every border and watching every gate. But though many a scout is caught unawares still the host of Melkor comes. Last of all men and maiar is Bombadil to fall and smoke drifts ever through the treetops of his home.
When Melkor’s armies at last converge the land in every direction is burned and barren and flying high as he dares Tom’s sparrow cannot see the far end of their great encampment. The night before the assault a wind seems to blow in every direction from Bombadil’s house and the clouds are banished from the sky. Last of all nights Tom gazes at the stars, Earendil shining still though his nemesis has risen again.
The morning is dim and fog-bound when Melkor commands his forces forth into the wood. First are men, frightened, confused, easily ensnared and cut down. Tom is grieved to do it but he strikes not at the children of Illuvatar but at Melkor himself, of whom they have become a member. Many fall in the mist but slowly his deceptions are found out. Tom is seen to be struck by a dart but no body is found and he is soon seen unhurt on another path. At last come the mighty of Melkor’s servants and the forests are leveled. The dragon’s fire dies in their throats but their cold strength cannot be ruined. On the hillock where once his home stood Tom gives them battle and the wyrms are struck down as by the mountain kings of old. But men come still. Tom’s halberd splinters and so he casts it away and draws stave and shield to fight until he stands on a great mound of smote bodies. At this time night falls and Melkor’s lieutenants tally their slain. Many, they count, have fallen to this one man or elder being and their lord is displeased. His great drakes are all but slaughtered and Bombadil’s enchantment stands still, holding his Balrogs at bay. Men seem of no use against this wild primordial thing and so he resolves to do battle himself on the morrow.
The night is long and Tom had no living thing to keep vigil with him. All around him are the hewn and the fallen, men and trees and beasts. He thinks of his long life, of Goldberry the river-woman’s daughter, of the hobbit folk and their merriment now silenced, of the stillness of the river at dawn and the warm peace of the evening. The evil clouds have come and he has not the strength to drive them away and so neither moon nor stars he sees, only the glow the fires of his enemy.
Again at first light he sends forth a mist, but Melkor, emerging with his terrible mace, banishes it and they fight in the open fields of carnage. The dark lord towered above even the trees in the elder times and now is strong as he ever was but Tom seem to grow to match him and fights him as a peer. Across the battlefield the combat rages until Tom’s shield is shattered and Grond hangs in fragments. At noon they take reprieve and Melkor is frightened, for even in Fingolfin he had not such a foe. When again the duel resumes Tom wields ax and stave together and Melkor draws a great black sword, larger in handle than the height of a man and set with all manner of barbs and hooks, but both are tired and the day ends before either have fallen.
At this Tom takes heart, for he cannot know what else they could send at him; what, he thinks, could best he who fought Melkor to a draw? And thinking thusly for half the night Melkor despairs and wonders from where such an enemy could have come then recalls his youth and giving order to the greatest of his lieutenants he sleeps.
Tom is awakened by a great stench and he knows that this day he will die. Brought forth from the deepest cavern of old Mordor is the last daughter of Ungoliant, and she has feasted since dawn on the flesh of the dead. Swollen she is and strong, as Bombadil rises and takes up his ax Melkor reminds her of their promise - kill this last Aniur and all of Middle-Earth shall be hers. She turns to him, eight eyes ravenous, fangs dripping with venom, spinnerets preparing a hideous web, and he is afraid. But as they circle each other a different thought enters Tom’s mind: he will die, there is no preventing that now, nothing he can do can avert that fate and so likewise he should have no fear for no action of his can truly affect his life, its length or its composition. All that stands before him now is to fight and to die and to do each of these well he knows he can.
At that moment the great beast saw in his eye a tear and thinking it to be of terror instead of joy she struck. And Bombadil fought. And his ax cleaved from her two hairy legs but her poison and her entangling web found him and he was overcome and consumed.
Thus did Tom Bombadil die, slain by the most terrible thing ever to walk on Middle-Earth.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Friday, October 8, 2010
Clio's Nightmare
High on Olympus Clio slept. And as she slept she dreamt a dream.
This was her dream. This was her nightmare, spoken by the many headed demons of Khaos.
Here is a world that could exist.
Men are insane. Without sanity, irrational in their every action. The laws that govern them are hunger and thirst and lust. They compose tales noble of their lives and its meanings, but these are lies. Here is a race of men totally ignorant of the root of their actions and terrified that their lives might lack what their fictions possess.
Some among them, by twist of mind or birth, perceive a world so different from that of their brothers that their hungers and lusts too are altered, and so they are chained in wheel chairs and injected with sedatives so that those whose vision is mode would not be bound to question their sight.
Here is a world that is the essence of meaninglessness and yet always they are blind to it for ever is their premise: I must be the master of my fate; me and my fictions, we are the center of all.
So sure are they that significance permeates the universe that they dream up gods and demons to do battle beyond the doors of night for the troubles of the earth. But this is false, all of it false, their is no order in their epic, the deepest desires of these men’s hearts is for bread and water and woman, all else is fiction.
In the beginning was not the word, for the beginning was silent; as it should have been, as all things should be. When first they began to wander, few and scattered, these illusions did not enter their minds. Their thoughts were of the hunt, the mammoth and the rhinoceri. Their gods were horses and their goddesses cattle. They ate and drank and were satisfied. But the desires of men, though simple, compounded upon themselves and as the earth began to fill men grew fearful. They feared that their hunger would never be satisfied nor their thirst quenched and that all the beautiful women would be in the bed of another. And so they raised walls and forged swords and went to war and called themselves glorious.
And men grew thick upon the earth and each man’s desires built up the raging insanity of the race until they forsook the land and gathered into vast cities of false stone and glass and hewn wood and spent all the hours of their lives deceiving their brothers, tricking them to trade meaningless scraps for food and drink and all manner of pleasures that would destroy them, body and soul.
And then she awoke in shaking and sweat and pondered what she has seen. But swiftly it passed from her and again she slept.
Beware you who call upon the muse - here is a world that could exist.
Here is Clio’s eternal nightmare.
This was her dream. This was her nightmare, spoken by the many headed demons of Khaos.
Here is a world that could exist.
Men are insane. Without sanity, irrational in their every action. The laws that govern them are hunger and thirst and lust. They compose tales noble of their lives and its meanings, but these are lies. Here is a race of men totally ignorant of the root of their actions and terrified that their lives might lack what their fictions possess.
Some among them, by twist of mind or birth, perceive a world so different from that of their brothers that their hungers and lusts too are altered, and so they are chained in wheel chairs and injected with sedatives so that those whose vision is mode would not be bound to question their sight.
Here is a world that is the essence of meaninglessness and yet always they are blind to it for ever is their premise: I must be the master of my fate; me and my fictions, we are the center of all.
So sure are they that significance permeates the universe that they dream up gods and demons to do battle beyond the doors of night for the troubles of the earth. But this is false, all of it false, their is no order in their epic, the deepest desires of these men’s hearts is for bread and water and woman, all else is fiction.
In the beginning was not the word, for the beginning was silent; as it should have been, as all things should be. When first they began to wander, few and scattered, these illusions did not enter their minds. Their thoughts were of the hunt, the mammoth and the rhinoceri. Their gods were horses and their goddesses cattle. They ate and drank and were satisfied. But the desires of men, though simple, compounded upon themselves and as the earth began to fill men grew fearful. They feared that their hunger would never be satisfied nor their thirst quenched and that all the beautiful women would be in the bed of another. And so they raised walls and forged swords and went to war and called themselves glorious.
And men grew thick upon the earth and each man’s desires built up the raging insanity of the race until they forsook the land and gathered into vast cities of false stone and glass and hewn wood and spent all the hours of their lives deceiving their brothers, tricking them to trade meaningless scraps for food and drink and all manner of pleasures that would destroy them, body and soul.
And then she awoke in shaking and sweat and pondered what she has seen. But swiftly it passed from her and again she slept.
Beware you who call upon the muse - here is a world that could exist.
Here is Clio’s eternal nightmare.
Passive Engagement
Composed of equal parts self-pity, loneliness, and a crippling inability to take the initiative, i have decided to expand my social program of passive engagement (not unlike the predatory strategy of the orb-web spider, but without any ability to entrap those who come near) to re-activating this blog. in which, as before, i will be posting the stuff i write, on which i will now comment.
Borges is my most recent inspiration, he is perhaps the only Latin American author i have read who wrote on a topic other than Latin America, and his ideas, if not always his style, are astoundingly original and unlike anything i have ever read, except for at times Lovecraft (to whom he is far superior).
On a more personal note, i have abandoned poetry. For the first time i am taking an english class in which the structure of poems is analyzed and there is a craft to it that i have never been aware of and have no desire to emulate. Meter and verse are not of interest to me, i see no benefit to sounding rhythmical, it only subtracts from the gravity of whatever it is I'm trying to say. given the apparent viability of micro-prose (Borges published it alongside poetry and short stories) dividing my thoughts into stanzas is pointless.
Borges is my most recent inspiration, he is perhaps the only Latin American author i have read who wrote on a topic other than Latin America, and his ideas, if not always his style, are astoundingly original and unlike anything i have ever read, except for at times Lovecraft (to whom he is far superior).
On a more personal note, i have abandoned poetry. For the first time i am taking an english class in which the structure of poems is analyzed and there is a craft to it that i have never been aware of and have no desire to emulate. Meter and verse are not of interest to me, i see no benefit to sounding rhythmical, it only subtracts from the gravity of whatever it is I'm trying to say. given the apparent viability of micro-prose (Borges published it alongside poetry and short stories) dividing my thoughts into stanzas is pointless.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Things I've Learned From 24
The only safe way to get from point A to point B is to have an extensive physical and then walk while alone for 100 miles in every direction.
No matter how long and complicated a crisis is, something very important, something that changes that nature of that crisis, will happen every hour, usually close to the end of that hour.
Everyone important drives a black or silver SUV, or a limousine escorted by black or silver SUVs.
The #1 way a state of crisis is maintained is the kidnapping of family members.
Anyone in upper management is a dick, no exceptions. If they start acting otherwise they will soon die.
A silenced handgun is the most effective weapon in the US arsenal.
Possession of a name is one’s most important asset for survival, people without names are between 5 and 10,000 times more likely to be killed. While a personal attachment to someone with a name makes one more likely to be threatened, a lack of personal attachments makes one more likely to be killed.
All good parents are hysterical morons, even otherwise reasonable and efficient people are stupid when it comes to their children.
If you betray a women she will stab you in the chest with a sharp object.
“Knowing how someone thinks” is a huge bonus in any attempt to deal with them, despite it rarely having any real implications.
Torture is the most effective way of obtaining information; although somehow the government is honor-bound to forbid it, their immortal demigod agents may use it whenever they please with very limited consequences.
The goodness of the people and the government of the USA is the only absolute, all other truths bend around this fact and must be manipulated to support it.
No matter how long and complicated a crisis is, something very important, something that changes that nature of that crisis, will happen every hour, usually close to the end of that hour.
Everyone important drives a black or silver SUV, or a limousine escorted by black or silver SUVs.
The #1 way a state of crisis is maintained is the kidnapping of family members.
Anyone in upper management is a dick, no exceptions. If they start acting otherwise they will soon die.
A silenced handgun is the most effective weapon in the US arsenal.
Possession of a name is one’s most important asset for survival, people without names are between 5 and 10,000 times more likely to be killed. While a personal attachment to someone with a name makes one more likely to be threatened, a lack of personal attachments makes one more likely to be killed.
All good parents are hysterical morons, even otherwise reasonable and efficient people are stupid when it comes to their children.
If you betray a women she will stab you in the chest with a sharp object.
“Knowing how someone thinks” is a huge bonus in any attempt to deal with them, despite it rarely having any real implications.
Torture is the most effective way of obtaining information; although somehow the government is honor-bound to forbid it, their immortal demigod agents may use it whenever they please with very limited consequences.
The goodness of the people and the government of the USA is the only absolute, all other truths bend around this fact and must be manipulated to support it.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Insomnia and Rachel Carson
I feel like this one requires some explanation. It’s an idea I’ve been thinking about for as long as I can remember, influenced by my recent reading of Rachel Carson, and composed at 3:30 in the morning. I’ve noticed before that late at night my writing changes, this is probably the best example of that phenomenon; I don’t know where it came from, I don’t know where it’s going, It’s just an image - don’t read into it.
The Cavern of the Ocean Tree
He looked out over the blue black flickering sea.
The grey roof above it. The rolling sand. The heartbeat of the waves.
Knelt and unlaced his shoes, placed them on a drift-log.
His socks. His shirt.
The sand was cool. Fine. Dry.
He walked toward the surf, the beach grew firm, ridged.
Moisture pressed out from around his feet.
The foam on his ankles. The eel grass strands pulled along, unwinding.
He submersed and swam. The water cold in its deeps, thickening under the pressure of its vast weight.
And swam. Beyond cresting waves and the reaching headland.
Swam.
Dove and surfaced.
Dove and did not rise, rip tide drawing him under, far down into the cold.
He reached out, flailing, gripped some tuberous passing mass and was jerked below the current.
Floating before the ancient lord of the ocean.
Tentacles splayed, great body still, eyes meeting his in inhuman focus.
Otherness and strength, beast unmet. Awareness like none else in that place.
Ropey limbs en-twisting him, the behemoth dived.
He did not fight the powerful drag down, his mind numbed by depth and cold and water.
Salt burned his eyes. The mirrored undersurface dim. He could not close them for the gazing. Above him, silhouetted, in the currents and undercurrents, schools of fish racing along invisible pathways to all corners of the ocean.
Dived and turned, arc into a rocky shelf. Last light disappeared.
Then air and dripping and thrashing and the ocean’s blood pressed from him to flow down the stone. Released and collapsed.
Light. Glowing rind of life, blue and white. Flowering polyps and skittering shelled things.
Mussels, shining in the phosphoresce their curious mirrored being, hanging from the notched stone above him as he stood.
Stepped with care, cave floor grooved but slick. Waters filled with some lit creature flowing from within.
Chamber narrowed, shortened.
He crouched and slid, facing the myriad fauna of the vault wall.
Walls opened and dropped away, he tumbled and slid.
A basin pulsing with the same light, shallow and wide.
At the center rising a low isle, on it an arbor of the sea.
Kelp rooted to the stone, reaching up, fronds held aloft, barnacles, sea moss, driftwood and starfish, green mottled crabs.
A hundred denizens of the tide.
All alit. All dripping from some crevice far above. All growing, wild with life.
Across the pool a dwelling in the cavern wall.
A being. Calm, pale as the moon. Young as he and small, standing lightly beneath the luminescent branching leaves of the ocean tree.
Her hair dark, long and haggard, cut against dull stone and washed in diatomaceous water. Gown worn, once white.
He waded into the pool, immersed to his knees, stepped on to the isle. She before him in radiance.
Her eyes afire with the violet crystalline fractaling of the eternal sky.
The Cavern of the Ocean Tree
He looked out over the blue black flickering sea.
The grey roof above it. The rolling sand. The heartbeat of the waves.
Knelt and unlaced his shoes, placed them on a drift-log.
His socks. His shirt.
The sand was cool. Fine. Dry.
He walked toward the surf, the beach grew firm, ridged.
Moisture pressed out from around his feet.
The foam on his ankles. The eel grass strands pulled along, unwinding.
He submersed and swam. The water cold in its deeps, thickening under the pressure of its vast weight.
And swam. Beyond cresting waves and the reaching headland.
Swam.
Dove and surfaced.
Dove and did not rise, rip tide drawing him under, far down into the cold.
He reached out, flailing, gripped some tuberous passing mass and was jerked below the current.
Floating before the ancient lord of the ocean.
Tentacles splayed, great body still, eyes meeting his in inhuman focus.
Otherness and strength, beast unmet. Awareness like none else in that place.
Ropey limbs en-twisting him, the behemoth dived.
He did not fight the powerful drag down, his mind numbed by depth and cold and water.
Salt burned his eyes. The mirrored undersurface dim. He could not close them for the gazing. Above him, silhouetted, in the currents and undercurrents, schools of fish racing along invisible pathways to all corners of the ocean.
Dived and turned, arc into a rocky shelf. Last light disappeared.
Then air and dripping and thrashing and the ocean’s blood pressed from him to flow down the stone. Released and collapsed.
Light. Glowing rind of life, blue and white. Flowering polyps and skittering shelled things.
Mussels, shining in the phosphoresce their curious mirrored being, hanging from the notched stone above him as he stood.
Stepped with care, cave floor grooved but slick. Waters filled with some lit creature flowing from within.
Chamber narrowed, shortened.
He crouched and slid, facing the myriad fauna of the vault wall.
Walls opened and dropped away, he tumbled and slid.
A basin pulsing with the same light, shallow and wide.
At the center rising a low isle, on it an arbor of the sea.
Kelp rooted to the stone, reaching up, fronds held aloft, barnacles, sea moss, driftwood and starfish, green mottled crabs.
A hundred denizens of the tide.
All alit. All dripping from some crevice far above. All growing, wild with life.
Across the pool a dwelling in the cavern wall.
A being. Calm, pale as the moon. Young as he and small, standing lightly beneath the luminescent branching leaves of the ocean tree.
Her hair dark, long and haggard, cut against dull stone and washed in diatomaceous water. Gown worn, once white.
He waded into the pool, immersed to his knees, stepped on to the isle. She before him in radiance.
Her eyes afire with the violet crystalline fractaling of the eternal sky.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Yesterday’s Cascadian
What is tomorrow
What is today
What is my dreams in the night
What is the gritty wet sand
on the lines of the road
What a place I am not to be
Low in the realm of the
great vehicles of steel and fume,
passing this way to the narrowing dark.
Lying as crucified on the cooling tar
No star-eyed beams come past
No merciful lights to speak my name
No tomorrow promised today
What is today
What is my dreams in the night
What is the gritty wet sand
on the lines of the road
What a place I am not to be
Low in the realm of the
great vehicles of steel and fume,
passing this way to the narrowing dark.
Lying as crucified on the cooling tar
No star-eyed beams come past
No merciful lights to speak my name
No tomorrow promised today
Wrath of Your God
I am a conscript in the host of the Pharaoh.
I am a child of Canaan.
I am a slave in Gomorrah.
And I have felt the wrath of your god.
Content to tend my fields in the turning of the sun
and the flooding of the Nile’s everspring
I was taken to watch over the slave nation of my king,
watch them toil with brick and mortar until their lost son came out of the desert;
and then saw their god bring low my people without mercy.
In mourning we commanded them to depart
but in vengeance pursued
and died when the waters of the treasonous sea came crashing about us.
Yes, I have felt the wrath of your god.
A child, I played among the cedars of my home on the mountain
and ate from the wealth of my inheritance.
My father was summoned to arms against a marauding people
and fought them at Jericho and Ai and Lachish;
aaw our brother’s walls fall before the feet and the swords of a nation of slaves,
returned to my mother no flesh but the brace from his wrist.
Then unto us they came,
ordered by a deity without name to kill our every lamb and child,
to slaughter for the promise of paradise.
Yes, I have felt the wrath of your god.
Burdened and beset, my life burning hell.
I have been imprisoned the entirety of my years in groveling bondage.
I have been raped each night until I bleed unceasingly and no man will touch me.
Beaten and whipped so that I lay in the street for days,
crawling to hide each night from the languid pillagers.
And this day a foreign man came and all left me to demand his new flesh.
In the early morning I saw him flee the city without backward glance
and behind him came a firestorm to consume this wretched place.
Yes, I have felt the wrath of your god.
I am Dresden, Verdun and Nanjing
I am the whore and the fetus
And I have felt the wrath of your god
I am a child of Canaan.
I am a slave in Gomorrah.
And I have felt the wrath of your god.
Content to tend my fields in the turning of the sun
and the flooding of the Nile’s everspring
I was taken to watch over the slave nation of my king,
watch them toil with brick and mortar until their lost son came out of the desert;
and then saw their god bring low my people without mercy.
In mourning we commanded them to depart
but in vengeance pursued
and died when the waters of the treasonous sea came crashing about us.
Yes, I have felt the wrath of your god.
A child, I played among the cedars of my home on the mountain
and ate from the wealth of my inheritance.
My father was summoned to arms against a marauding people
and fought them at Jericho and Ai and Lachish;
aaw our brother’s walls fall before the feet and the swords of a nation of slaves,
returned to my mother no flesh but the brace from his wrist.
Then unto us they came,
ordered by a deity without name to kill our every lamb and child,
to slaughter for the promise of paradise.
Yes, I have felt the wrath of your god.
Burdened and beset, my life burning hell.
I have been imprisoned the entirety of my years in groveling bondage.
I have been raped each night until I bleed unceasingly and no man will touch me.
Beaten and whipped so that I lay in the street for days,
crawling to hide each night from the languid pillagers.
And this day a foreign man came and all left me to demand his new flesh.
In the early morning I saw him flee the city without backward glance
and behind him came a firestorm to consume this wretched place.
Yes, I have felt the wrath of your god.
I am Dresden, Verdun and Nanjing
I am the whore and the fetus
And I have felt the wrath of your god
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