Our Dramatic Denouement

"So Banaias the son of Joiada went up, and setting upon him slew him"


--------------------/ Our Dramatic Denouement; The Thoughts Of Banaias As He Met Eyes With Joab One Last Time [1 Kings and Things Chapter 2]


Sanctuaries surely shelter souls shaken seeking solace and
substantially so: for Abner the son of Ner, and to Amasa the son of Jether
their stellar memories sleep solemnly here
and in the hearts of their sweet kin shooting
up to their soul’s stars as they savor each sunset shouting
loudly in the spirit of salutation: we will never forget! soon
enough will see you again, and they also rest
in the annals of King David soberly, and in time shamefully
stirring up recollections of the silent storms that
siphoned any joy he would have had in his last sad moments
sharing his greatest journey (to God) with his friends
dying in peace
and for this you have expressed zero remorse
perhaps haughtily ignorant or worse cynically indifferent
yet now irony prevails and has chased you into the corners
of the very tabernacle that your actions humiliated and slighted
kneeling down before a God you sneeringly dismissed
as your own subordinate, subjugated to whim and preference
snubbing his guidance and precepts
without food
without friend to comfort
only the harrowing episodic flashbacks of their last screams
and the multiple voices of your inner desire salivating at the thought
of purgation
of this evil from your conscience, yet it is unremitting, and unrelenting
just beneath the altar your shadow is cast by the dwindling wick
and flickering flame of the last candle
you presciently thought to bring with you and I see a sagging, sulking,
sullen man
slinking against the wall
a shell
of what he used to be. Waiting to die, wanting
the Angel of Death to silence the shrills of guilt.
When I was younger, like you, I used to scuttle over to
the tabernacle full of dreams, always wondering what the future
in her provenance might hold
little did we both know that our divergent paths would
one dark day cross in this place for the denouement
under entirely different circumstances, and us having
a completely inverse relationship to the other
in the beginning you prayed for a prosperous life
no matter the wiles, while I prayed for a meager death
broadly embracing asceticism
yet in the end it is death that has come for you
sinister in her demands
and life who has greeted me with a kiss
and let me wield her poignant power
(recompensing her for those who were unceremoniously stolen)





---------------------1 Kings 2:27-34
So Solomon cast out Abiathar, from being the priest of the Lord, that the word of the Lord might be fulfilled, which he spoke concerning the house of Deli in Silo. And the news came to Joab, because Joab had turned after Adonias, and had not turned after Solomon: and Joab fled into the tabernacle of the Lord and laid hold on the horn of the altar. And it was told king Solomon, that Joab was fled into the tabernacle of the Lord, and was by the altar: and Solomon sent Banaias the son of Joiada, saying: Go, kill him. And Banaias came to the tabernacle of the Lord, and said to him: Thus saith the king: Come forth. And he said: I will not come forth, but here I will die. Banaias brought word back to the king, saying: Thus saith Joab, and thus he answered me. And the king said to him: Do as he hath said: and kill him, and bury him, and thou shalt remove the innocent blood which hath been shed by Joab, from me, and from the house of my father. And the Lord shall return his blood upon his own head, because he murdered two men, just and better than himself: and slew them with the sword, my father David not knowing it, Abner the son of Ner, general of the army of Israel, and Amasa the son of Jether, general of the army of Juda. And their blood shall return the head of Joab, and upon the head of his seed for ever. But to David and his seed and his house, and to his throne be peace for ever from the Lord. So Banaias the son of Joiada went up, and setting upon him slew him, and he was buried in his house in the desert.