“Loki’s Curtain Call”
Trickster god – that’s me indeed.
But I might as well be
the Fixer God –
it’s in my hands
to craft clever, devious solutions
whenever
something goes wrong in this place.
“Fix it, Loki!” for millennia…
and never with thanks.
I’ve had enough.
What if
I were to let it all go –
just give up Norse-Godding –
for, say, interior decorating?
I certainly possess
a useful flair,
and I wouldn’t even have to look far
for funky paints!
Want some wildly coloured walls,
disguised trapdoors for unwelcome guests,
spatters of madness
here and there?
Call me up.
Need a conversation piece,
Chaos bound in Ragnarök?
I’ll see to it.
(There could be minimal damage…)
Odin may roll his eye,
Freyja and Freyr may look disdainful and toss their golden-apple hair,
but the loss
would be entirely theirs.
Goodbye Asgard,
I’m off to start a business.
Though, for the sake of efficiency
(and one last farewell gesture),
I may take along that hammer of Thor’s…
Marta Ziemelis. Copyright February 2014.
One day I saw an ad for the Jotun paint company, and my mind decided to play word association, reminding me, “Hey, isn’t Loki sometimes referred to as part- jötunn (also known as part frost giant) in Scandinavian myths?” I then had a conversation with a good friend, also a fan of Loki and Norse myths, about what might happen if the infamous god of gleefully getting everything into a mess decided to go in for interior decorating. The piece above is the eventual fruit of that conversation.