Nietzschean Poetry Off

Valus Markel

In Nietzsche's blood
We dip our pens
We poets
To this well
We pilgrimage

Valus Markel

Until we learn
To pierce
Our too dear hearts
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James Kyle
James Kyle You are a clever guy.
Your poems sing out clearly.
If I ask you whence they originate-
In the womb of dreams, wrapped and laid abed,

Or the dark and fetid earth, in among
The sand and peat- can you tell me?
Or perhaps their provenance is rather
In among the cold gush of stars, the fleeing tor

of sky, the pour of vertigo
That comes down around as though a bucket tipped,
That jolts you awake in the dead of night,
As you sit and breathe the moonlight.

Are these the spaces that trouble you?
The vast open arms of World?
They accept you. I hear them, whispering:
They say, in their coy and smiling way,

That you are theirs.
But perhaps you think you belong to another.
Perhaps a Beloved still holds your eye,
perhaps you treasure another single heart.

But treasures are not for you. Nor gold,
Nor silks, nor jasmine, the heavy drops of ambergris.
Gold does not tarnish nor decay,
and this is why:

It rusts its admirers. Women are the same.
Lives, luxuries, truths. The same. None of them
owe you anything, Only the spaces, the ones that always
will be promised to you.

Valus Markel

Names aplenty
Have I offered the daemon
In hopes of summoning
That strange and subtle one
Who is my muse

Many origins has He
Many paths to meet me by
And when I know Him best
He hides

James Kyle

Your meanings could not be clearer.
No wrapping in foreign papers, gaudy and crisp
until the moment they wrinkle
and must be destroyed,

No hiding behind machineries of thought,
those vast tinker toy metropolises
that keep us from standing, drawing up,
looking old Friedrich in the eye

And saying, my father! I surpass you.
The kingdom of heaven is here.
You seem to know, at least in secret,
That your dark god needs no more sacrifice.

He is bored of names. He snorts, tossing
His heavy head, flaring His mighty nostrils.
His fist clasps, unclasps. He can feel,
As I know you can feel,

The old blood stirring.
New beginnings are nigh.
Times and times proceed apace
But soon they shall all be drawn together,

Clutched, like reins, or many fishing nets,
and brought in. But what is at the end
Of those ropes? Does any man know
The harvest prepared?

No. But you can feel it, in the mornings
And the evenings, late; you can see it glimmer
In the pools of oil and the cold cloud bank
that strew your subjective perceptions.

It needs no interpreting. The nexus
Calls to you. The god strains at his bonds,
not yet fully awoke. But soon He shall rise,
Shake off the dust of two and half thousands

of years, and with a mighty laugh
Walk the Earth again. Are you ready, my friend
to hear that thunder that breaks
Your heart, to know that life has no more claim,

That words have no meaning, enjoyments,
Beautiful things, the ones who loved us truly,
They are as scraps of paper, floating
Into His terrible void?


Valus Markel

 i would relinquish my pilgrim soul
to curl over thought and thing
like a spacious tongue
and return

i am Void

severe spectre of occult industry

solemn am i
sombre long before the world
shrouded in myth and song

i am Ocean

deep in splendor
storyteller with salted breath

i do not decry the sober dark
i give birth to agitative visions

i am Awe

inscrutable light
whom the fibrous eye of the poet covets

i am Solitude

disconsolate
modest juggernaut of Saturn

just beyond the ornamental throne of Jupiter
the stillness of fate inside of fire

James Kyle

Mmmm. Valus, my beautiful friend.
You recoiled from the brink.
At the precipice, the subtle line
Between the Last World and the open air

That your heart, in darkness, has longed for,
You slipped. You desired, for an instant,
Something other than the fullness
Of that terrible God, and it unhinged you.

The arms, like long skeins of ivy, snapped out
and dragged you, back down, down, down,
into the world of vanities, the unmoored sea,
afloat as if in space, itself not even knowing

If it is craft or ocean, world of light
or the Cave of darkness. You cannot hide
From me, from the page, from the God
who calls you. Every jot and careless tittle

Bares your most true heart.
How could it be otherwise?
Every word, when its mate it meets,
Breeds children, little spiral wisps,

whose foreheads shine, imprinted
with the mark of your own true thoughts.
You cannot hide. It is only that you want to
Which has denied you the passage

Through the door which you have earned.
Ironic, but predictable: Is it not
Always so? Is it not every impossible desire
which shuts the door on all the fruit

Of this, our Eden, our Duino,
This ground where Nietzsche's bones, ground fine,
Have salted the Earth, where his shards of teeth
are sowed like nuts beneath the mysterious soil,

just waiting, barely able to contain their own
pure force, to become?
In your soul, you are that oak, wild and still,
Which denies the light to fools and those

Who in vanity seek to tread in holy places,
Who shelters the calm, the sad, the wild,
men and beasts who walk the lonely Earth.
Have faith, my brother.

Have confidence in the sound of your words.
Let the texture of their ancient, weathered hum
Knit the Will in you to say:
I am free. Craven, weak, silly, confused,

I am free. Of men and of beasts,
Of Plato, of the heartless armatures of thought,
of all obligations, all debts. Steady your hand:
Your own heart shall happily guide you.


Valus Markel

One man's demon
Is another's angel


Valus Markel

"The ideal of morality has no more dangerous rival than the ideal of supreme strength, of highest life. In pursuance of this ideal man becomes a hybrid thing, a brute-spirit, whose cruel mentality exerts a horrible spell upon weaklings."
— Novalis

James Kyle

How apropos. I cannot help but admire
your reply, I cannot help but think
of you as a brother. But I must say:
here there is danger, here there are pitfalls,

the snares of ego wait, hungering, slavering,
underneath the rock-strewn ground.
Yet it is not strength which threatens us,
but pride; not an overabundance of love,

but a dearth, not vicious, frenzied passion,
but contempt. Novalis, Hymner, lost wanderer
on the roads of the human night,
did not yet see the way forward.

Even Nietzsche, Rilke, men of mettle
so fine that flame is too clunky and swollen
to embrace it, only caught the barest glimmer
of the path.

But you, my brother, are on its precipice.
Those old Germans, satyrs and hermits,
call to you: every shred of a long fallen leaf,
every scrap of smiling cloud,

every gaping pupil that leers from a human eye,
calls to you. Freedom is here. It is now.
The God waits for you, writhing and pushing
against your swollen belly:

biting, turning, rumbling against the folds
of skin that enclose him, the veil
that keeps Him from wreaking His beautiful
change on the world.

Make no mistake. He shall continue
to punish you, to claw you within,
if you deny Him. Old Daddy Friedrich
and the Hymner too, and Rainier Maria,

and Hesse, Goethe, Heidegger, the lot,
are the merest shadows of your truth.
Show me, Valus! Not the pale, shivering
might of the self-denying, but the might,

the pure, unadorned love
that beats in the breast of a Man!
You are sufficient to the task.
Will you allow yourself to it?

Valus Markel

Every vision is a veil
We must get beyond
Every god beckons to us
That we may beckoned
By another god

The horizon recedes
On the crest
Of an eternal dawn

Valus Markel

An artist wants to get out
Whatever's in his head
While critics want to get
In Artist's heads
And rearrange
The furniture
He jettisons

James Kyle

Interior decorating is not my thing.
The best use of my passion is your passion:
The best use of your thoughts are to measure
The features of your truest face.

Horizons change - the sphere upon which we walk
The torus through which our planet tumbles
is endless, recursive, looped in
to itself. Thus, the change is not unanchored,

ever flowing onward:
Eternity Returns.
Your Truth will return to you, on a summer's night
or a cold winter morning, as the steam of your cup

makes love to the pale light,
in many different guises, on many different days,
until you grant it it's rightful place.
Kings, when they cannot ascend,

Grow dark, and twisted, and champ at the bit,
gnaw at the root, scamper and dance
through bracken and desert, naked as owls;
They sicken. Their sickness shows itself

In every task to which they set their noble hands.
Only when rightfully crowned
Will the truth of your passion
Allow you, move you,

to polish your words til they sing,
until they snap like bullets into tin plate,
until my heart cannot beat apart from them
or be captivated by any other tune.