Tornado Warning
“But there is a king: his name is Lludd. They call him the Once and Future King.”
Surrealist Prophecies #2
The second in a sequence of surrealist prophecies written using the divinatory technique of automatic writing (with subsequent revision). The theme of the sequence is the collapse of our global civilization due to uncontrollable climate change, leading to a mass rejection of both faith and reason and the re-enchantment of our world among the ruins of our failed creations. Some of the poems in the sequence are set before the Fall and portray the spiritual and emotional dilemma of our current crisis. Some describe the Fall itself, and the strange changes in thought and perception that will be needed if any are to survive a world in which humanity has been radically de-centered. Some describe the world to come, a world newly alive with gods and spirits yet free of all dogma or fixed belief – a world of beauty and strange magic.
The trigger for the writing of the second prophecy was the sound of a tornado warning siren outside the window while reading Abel Paz’s biography of Buenaventura Durruti.
Tornado Warning
A high, proud, howling outside the window through an enervating lassitude of limp, white streets.
A scar advances across this torn landscape of trembling cheek.
A leak of blood and bone discreetly declares itself beneath your eyelashes and tells you to wear a pair of fiery eyeglasses, to declare his reign.
For spring means rain.
And in the swarming bug-storm of divine inventions there will be no mention of our intentions: what we made is what we made. This is our one and only chance: we can dance with the coming sunsets of oblivion or stay home to sing.
But there is a king: his name is Lludd. They call him the Once and Future King.
Let us weave a garland of teeth to make his headband; let him wear our eyes on his red hands like rings. This hasn’t gone as planned.
And when King Lludd sings,
When the Jacquerie
With brutal mockery
Dethrone and debone
All lesser kings
Oh, when King Lludd sings.
Still if in ruins we must dwell,
Fear not, we shall.
A time for building will come again.
It’s not that we cannot build. We built all these things. The mud-splattered walls of all your flooded palaces, the brick-battered glass facades of all your callous palisades. We built all these things.
And we shall know how to dwell in the shell of the world you made us make for you before we build our own.
Christopher Scott Thompson
Christopher Scott Thompson is an anarchist, martial arts instructor, devotee of Brighid and Macha, and a wandering exile roaming the earth. Photo by Tam Zech.
