Open Editions: ReliX ~ Banished I
Banished I : the new beginning of the ReliX Odyssey, following DigX ~ the moment the poet is cast from the halls of tradition and thrust into the wilderness, for the danger of imagination itself.
In this defiant epic, the poet becomes the outlaw prophet, punished for wielding the pen like a blade, daring to challenge the gods with visions too immense to be contained. What begins as scorn becomes fuel. The wilderness becomes workshop. Exile becomes consecration. And what ornaments he finds there become ReliX.
He takes up the quill like Odysseus takes up the bow ~ and from that posture, unleashes arrows of incandescent language across the courts that disowned him.
The gods, speaking in broken symbols, let their wisdom fall in drool and dust ~ but the poet picks it up, reforges it in ink, and fires it back with prodigal force.
And when the myth deepens in Banished II & III, we descend into the psychic underworld ~ a dream-haunted childhood home now stalked by devils, volcanoes, and fig-laced omens. It is a confrontation not just with exile, but with legacy ~ with ancestral wounds, cosmic wrath, and the alchemy of shame into power.
Together, these works do not seek forgiveness. They mark the beginning of an age.
The gods exiled him.
But the poet replied with thunder.
BANISHED I ~ poem by Laurence Fuller
I imagined,
And for those thoughts I was scorned
Scorned for what I thought
Because it was the greats,
And the Gods with whom I fought,
I sought triumph
And a freedom from the reins,
When they sought restraint,
I had done the most dangerous thing of all,
More dangerous than wield a sword
Held by any mortal man,
And as for my pen,
This magic could much further extend.
My words unto visions and then back again.
Though it cast me out unto the wilderness,
I would stay there, with my fire, my art, my talent,
And this witless magic that was the empty vessel for my mind to fill.
As much as the empty page,
Quill and ink of my poetry journal,
They all inspired to express this;
My will.
~ LF
