Terra Firma, Tactus Ferventes

To exercise the mind is the highest human endeavor

Scholars and saint alike have rejected the earthly

Disdained the mortal and secular

Jesus spoke of nothing but the world beyond this one

And any indulgence of the body was foolishness

Pandering to a transitory shadow of the eternal light and truth

And while I find a certain pleasure in the interplay of words and thoughts

And the debate between two opposed ideals and their constituents

That cold joy pales in comparison to the tightly wound spring of fire

That thrills at leaps and bounds and drives me to fly across the grass

Wind caressing my skin ground thumping beneath my feet

Gravity threatening to transform the elegance of my motion into the beauty of chaos

Or the hack and slash of the melee overreach and undermine shove and twist

A vicious dance of intimate power and dominance also inextricably collaborative

Grunt and pant and grab and twist each move linked to another soul’s impulses

Base and bestial, they cry, incognizant of consequence and ignorant of the ensuing

Enslaved to the senses, you become insensate to higher truths and slave to greater minds

Our way alone holds security efficacy power through knowledge and knowledge of power

Such words seem to come not from those who have joyously wrestled with the meat of existence

Unless old and withered they look with bitterness on the pulsing vibrant vitality in its prime

And see only the dissipated past of their own strength as unreachable as the bottom of the sea

These words come from the weaker never-weres who view such things as temptations

Tacitly admitting how strongly they wished to feel the maddening joy of bending and being bent

Jealously watched as strength skill swiftness they lacked was lauded in others

In response they turn to word, concepts, philosophies and figures, bickering where others battle

Engaging in debates where, afterwards, both parties walk away with little resolved or changed

With an intangible outcome, victor free to doubt into defeat, loser priggishly stubborn of validity

No such shades in the bright bonfire of the physical realm there is certainty and finality

Success is concrete failure is felt and sometimes final each movement has reaction

And ability is determined by determination clear cut and concise you have it or you do not

While the towers of the mind produce wonders untold and raise the pinnacles of possibility

They are built on foundations of stone by strong backs guarded by corded arms

Filled by the physics of physicality and the base biological urges of all

Disdain not strength or engagement in the external for we are still poised above the jungle

Ask the Romans where their grand schemes led and the Goths how they triumphed

Civilization is but a bubble and beyond barbarism… embrace the beast to best it

-D.M.D.M. 6-21-2013