God Building and Name Taking

Written by Jeremy Cooper (Submissions Editor, Writer, Representative) Writing, particularly via the medium of poetry, has been profoundly influential in my life for two primary reasons: 1. The understanding of what it means to deify and subsequently worship 2. The ability to create and wield a name that holds value The gods and names I was provided at home failed to provide these two points to me, so I invented my own through the use of words--a fantasy realm constructed exclusively of the bricks and mortar found in reality. In this realm, there are two major deities, at least of which I know so far, who are Sin, the Moon God, and Eros, the Love God. While their world, their throne, their subjects, etc. are fantastical and beyond what would be considered reality, there is nothing about them, their world, their throne, their subjects, etc. that is fake. Sin is a creature of the night, fixated heavily on verbalizing the beauty he finds in immoral acts. What does it take to be in a mind state to kill? To lie? To hate? To forget? To sin? He finds comfort in evolution of the Byronic figure as he approaches closer and closer to the turmoil that rides the walls of a Raskolnikov. He is possessive of change, believing it is central to his character just as it is central to the Moon via its cycles. He is a man of irony and god of absolutes--apathetic due to a certainty the ghosts of his past dictate his future. In contrast, Eros is something else; however, he is not an opposite to Sin. Eros rules a domain less physically present than Sin and oh, does he ever rule differently when he has the throne. Eros is romantic, obsessive, neurotic, repetitive, deluded, mad, and repetitive. Unlike Sin, he is less rooted to physical responsibility (since Sin rules an often visible object), which is evident in the content and presentation of his desires--yes, he desires. Unlike Sin, Eros desires. Unlike Sin, Eros wants and wants and wants not to need but needs to need to want in order not to need. Eros is confusing but entirely enraptured in the insanity because it means someone made him feel this way. Someone made Eros love. Yes, it was his fault. What god is so easily influenced by man? The ones worthy of worship, Eros would say. Eros took the throne but once, but damn was it wild. These gods rule my hand and speak to me separately. I worship them as payment. I know their pride, wear their crimes, and kiss their scars. I adopt their names, and they feed me writing. They set the sky ablaze because there are more vikings in the sky than there are on Earth now; yet, they know a burning sky is no place for birds, so they rest them in my hands for me to caress and promise rapture as I pluck their feathers because the flightless pray, and the chosen wear headdresses of bird feathers. Their names fit my flesh better than Jeremy sometimes, and I've learned the limits of this flesh through their confessions that I publish as poetry.