honey and sting

One day House looks at Foreman and sees
a Crusader. In fairness perhaps some substance is involved,
or one of the random flukes of House's mind.
Nevertheless he catches a vision of the man, horsed,
not in shining armor but in something more dented and deranged,
as if the long road there and back again was almost more
than he could bear. Crusades, after all, are all about war,
and never mind the holy spin, resolve to something stale and dank.
A slave trade, a land grab, a jihad, by any other name.
House sees the pain and rage in Foreman's brow,
his shoulders weighted with the burden of false hope,
but something else as well -- though weary to the bone,
bedraggled by the disillusioned road --
he also sees, unsullied beneath the sneer,
Foreman's dream.

Cool as cucumber in a tall drink on a summer's day,
languid as a breeze, sharp as wit at court that rends as often
as it entertains: the man of law in repose.

Each life takes its theme from a hidden alchemy
of earth, fire, water, wind, of stories told and dreams foretold,
of pain, both inflicted and stumbled on,
of some ecstasy or charge that makes it real,
that takes the scattered nightmare of embodied life
and turns it into sense.

He spins, just so, this sense into a calm and wide
philosphy. Though constant in his call, he entertains the lyer
and the thief, the lover and the rogue.

Immortal only means
you've time to sing another verse.
And the song continues on.
And the song continues on.

Inara, Inana, Ishtar, Star of Evening,
Star of Dawn. How many names she bears,
how heavy is the cloak of archetype, of Divinity upon
her shoulders that are only human in the end?
Yet she draws the Goddess down, in true repose
into her flesh. Perfect beauty, perfect love.

And like her namesake,
lost.