Kenaz, torch, branch alight— 
   Fire of creation, will to generate 
And regenerate through sacrifice— 
   Forge passage from this heart new 
Lifeblood glinting on Ginnungagap 
   For another world. Shine on our red 
Scrabbling in the concrete ruins of empire; 
   Rouse this army of limbs from bed 
As the castle falls, having finally slighted 
   Itself, and show how it looks like dawn 
Metered by the exact science 
   Of hindsight. 
Let Odin hang 9,000 years this time. 
   Let jötnar and troll-women bathe in 
Destiny’s Well 
   This time.
Allfather, have you learned enough 
   This time?

–

dedicated to those who continue to burn it down

–

Additional context:

In Norse mythology, Yggdrasil is the World Tree that holds the Nine Realms.

In the beginning, the primordial void Ginnungagap births Muspell, the fire realm, and Niflheim, the ice realm. From the melting rime of their proximity, Ymir the great sexless jötunn (sometimes translated as ‘giant’) was born, and from Ymir all jötnar are descended, including Odin.

Odin, the All-Father, slaughters Ymir to fashion the rest of the Realms and its peoples from their body. He has no love for other jötnar, often tricking, stealing from, and killing them, and distinguishing himself apart from them despite direct lineage. Odin famously sacrifices himself to himself by hanging nine days upon Yggdrasil with no food or water, and often sits at a Well down at its roots discussing the future with a severed head. Odin gouges his own eye out to learn rune magic. He is always hungry for more knowledge of the future, yet never learns to quell the violence apparently essential to his being.

Kenaz (ᚲ), the sixth rune of the Elder Futhark (ᚠᚢᚦᚨᚱᚲ), has the phonetic sound of K and is derived from the Old English cén, meaning torch. Known in Old Norse as kaun (“ulcer”), there is an additional meaning for ᚲ of the internal fever-fire.

Kenaz is a rune of illumination, creative inspiration, and transformation, and is associated with Loki — the trickster shapeshifter who may have been birthed by Muspell‘s native fire (“logi“) itself or born of lightning striking leaves. Like fire for humans, Loki both poses great danger to the gods and gives them fantastic gifts.

It is tension between Odin and Loki that ultimately brings about Ragnarök, i.e., the Norse endtimes. The gods and jötnar battle, Yggdrasil burns and sinks into the sea.

–

There are a lot of White supremacists out there who love Norse mythology too, and one way to identify them is if they call themselves Odinists. If Loki is the god of queer people who see themselves reflected in an ancient genderfluid anarchist, Odin has become the god of white men who don’t like Christianity but still yearn for an all-knowing patriarch.

In my reading of the mythos, Odin attempts to kill off the jötunn part of himself through self-sacrifice and names himself something different, Æsir, now of the race of gods.

–

I wanted to dunk on Odin a little in this poem, yes, but mainly I wanted to express the power and clarity I feel when we talk about burning down this whole violent system in America.

There is no reforming a nation that shoots and kidnaps people on the street. There is no reforming a nation that puts people in cages. There is no reforming a nation that bombs other sovereign nations for oil and gas. There is no reforming a nation built by enslaved African peoples. There is no reforming a nation that began with a 96% genocide of its Native population.

There is only abolition and abolition again.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Yggdrasil will always burn and sink into the sea because it was formed from the murder of a queer Indigenous being and run by a dangerous gang of Æsir-supremacists.

Loki will always emerge — elemental as the fire from Muspell that thawed Ymir — to bring the whole thing down.

And like the new Tree that rises out of the sea again, we too will rebuild a better world.

She sees rising up
a second time
the earth from the ocean,
ever-green;
the cataracts tumble,
an eagle flies above,
hunting fish
along the fell.

- from Völuspá