I think I’ve finally gotten fairyland
Out of my head.
Just demonic things…
Have to show why a vampire is evil…
Or a dragon…
I guess.
Funny thing is that the one poem I wrote
Is so effective at preserving my faith
So effective at teaching me…
I think there’s some good to it.
Really… people think of Christianity as Fairy Tales
But eerily, my poems make the Fairy Tales real.
Which is why I’m a little concerned about them…
I don’t want my audiences believing in Jontunheim
Or that I’m really Judas Son of James.
I also don’t want my audience believing I wrote a gospel.
As, I find that manipulative…
But… John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress
Is so good at describing theology.
Mine, much in the same tradition as it
Is really dealing with dreams.
I suppose rather than there being actual, physical beings
The dancing skeletons exist somewhere in our minds;
Maybe where the “Skeletons in our closet,”
Line comes from.
Though, I’ve never written about dancing skeletons.
Sometimes, a subconscious cue…
A factual inaccuracy
Can be more real pertaining the truth
Of what we want to say.
We call it a literary device.
They sometimes offend an audience
Who wants the easy explanation…
Reading wise, there’s a device called the “Vertical Axis”
A wonderful little tool by the Postmodernists—
You will hear me praise them as much as I scorn them—
That removes something that you don’t understand
From the text, so you don’t have to labor over it.
It might… by all accounts…
Come to mind later.
Frankly, though, I was always taught to use “Context Clues.”
That was my big ta-da in reading class…
And using context clues I learned how society will punish you for using context clues.
So I don’t know what a word actually means
I context clued to make it mean what I thought it meant
And was later made fun of by grammarian snobs.
We called that critical thinking at a time…
It produced philosophers
But not deck swabs.
So, the reason why our education system is revamped
To produce serfs instead of kings.
Serfs who no longer use context clues
Nor ignore a difficult trope
But rather must laboriously tire over it
Until the meaning is divined.
They come… with practice.
Sometimes it’s best to just ignore something the fifth or sixth time through.
Sooner or later
A comprehensive education will unearth the fact
And it will make whatever I seem to be writing
More enjoyable for my audiences.
I know I love that in other poems…
When I realize an allusion relates to Photo-Synthesis
How unrelated it is, but the allusion is still one
I can dive into for about an hour.
That’s Fairyland, though, what it essentially is for.
Rather than
Let’s not get caught up in the flesh of the poems
Let’s dive deep into the metaphors
To kind of understand why the poems
Kind of reflect some kind of grand conspiracy theory
That almost compulsively wants to be believed.
If the metaphor is found,
The Thirteen Kings
My villains,
Are understood in their proper context,
We see they are rather sins, or Satans incarnate
In us… which we must remove by Christ’s power.
What is God’s power?
The reason to know that there is spiritual power
In trying to act more kind and benevolent.
Because it’s important that we understand that is what the Gospel meant
By power.
Not the power to raise the dead
But the power to make a person feel good about themselves.
Which, in all circumstances, makes life a lot easier
Without a burdened conscience always complaining about others
When you’re the real villain.
In Fairyland, the reader finds themselves to be the villain.
As, that’s what Wicked John or Abaddon really is
Is just you, me, anyone who has an uncontrolled urge
That leads them into the dark depths of sin
And suffering.
Because Hell and Fairyland
Start on earth…
That is my process with Fairyland is getting the hell
The delusion of hell
Out of my head—which I had subconsciously wrote as hell—
So that we can see
Better.
I want it to be clear
That a Unicorn is a goal that can’t be obtained.
That a Pegasus is a token that will always prosper
But it will be your ruin.
A Vampire is someone who will always try to be in vogue with Status Quo—
Status Quo is who I call Belial…
A Dragon is a hoarder of wealth
A Giant is an uncontrollable urge or sin,
A Werewolf is anger,
A Hydra is a beast of lies and the one truth that is meant to ruin you,
A Mermaid and Elf are people who lust for the good life
Even to the point of distorting their relationships,
A fairy is an iPhone or Android; an idol, a false reality,
Meant to be more real, and satisfy our boredom:—
Wicked John is our flesh,
Abaddon is our flagrant, unconscious sins,
Medea is the Media,
Thor is our lust for absolute control and power,
Lucifer, he is when we have obtained the goal
Of absolute control and power.
So many other things lurk in there…
Geists, which often embody the Archetypes instilled in us from entertainment,
Fairy lORD, the creature, almost living,
Which feeds us with Geists and Giant Souls,
Somodivas and Nymphs, which are women
Who will utterly forsake family and friend
Simply because they can… they even think they ought.
The Red Bull, who is the path of life we didn’t choose
And there he is, with all his glory.
Here we are, with all our shame.
Helen of Troy, and her infamous beauty, which is distracting
And tries to throw us off the good path.
So many…
And often we find ourselves becoming one or the other of these.
Either a low level minion
Or the very devils themselves.
The Bull frustrating us,
Of what we could have been
If we had just made the wrong decision
And sold out.
Or the Valkyrie and Harpy,
The pride and patriotism
Which blinds us from what is right from wrong
To puts us in contention with those so much like ourselves
But are only different because they have spotted wings.
That is my process in Fairyland.
B. K. Neifert 