1.
I loved Gollum.
I went for a tumble with him.
It started out as conventional wrestling.
But entanglement with a creature is risky.
His cold hiss breath entered my heart.
His words like a viper about to strike.
And then they grew soft.
And then he whimpered.
And then he crawled about my feet,
so that I wanted to kick him off the cliff.
I was slow at learning lessons.
He took full advantage of this.
He couldn't help it.
He was Gollum.
He saw the darkness in me.
Then he leapt
and fell and screamed
as he hit the uneven ground at Emyn Muil.
Sickly nasty, then sickly sweet.
He was Gollum.
He was always falling beyond our reach.
Until finally he lunged and fell again
into the rumbling cleansing flame,
the jagged rocks like an open jaw.
He was attracted to some doom inside me.
I was hardly conscious of it.
We all just wanted to be loved.
But being able to love was another matter.
2.
Relationship was sleazy with him. It was choking.
A rough cough in a dark pit.
It was like vomiting.
Each time I understood him, I was released.
The dung beetles scuttled away beneath us.
The slimy marshes were low and steamy.
The worms were rising to the surface.
I stroked the ring that was my comfort
like an adolescent beneath the covers.
I only wanted my precious in the darkness.
Then he was like a pervert
looking through a window.
He was making love to me with his eyes.
His smile grew shiny like a serated knife.
I did not like the situation.
His withered muscular body repulsed me.
His cock was like a little slug,
slimy and harmless.
But he said there was venom in its tip.
So I remained alert until I knew
that there would be nothing come out of it.
3.
There is no sense of consequence in this fiend.
for the suffering he causes to the living.
He is weak of personality, but cunning
to those who do not know this ways.
O Gollum.
I have pitied you ...
At first sincerely, then in repulsion.
Are we really of the one bent coin?
4.
Occasionally he caught a silver fish
and feasted upon her naked flesh,
while he sucked he thought of birds,
nice birds and all their scattered legs.
He lost the smaller ones.
They went glittering through his stubbs,
flipping into the rivers,
that would soon light up with dawn,
and then that golden moon would come,
to these sad and lonely pools,
followed by all the stars of all the worlds,
that we wished upon.
These days are dark, but we go on.
There is a rainbow inside the storm.
But Gollum, the old shire vampire.
You will not be saved.
5.
I was late to come to love him.
By the time I arrived he was old.
He had already been destroyed.
He had wearied of all light.
Even the kind moon burnt his mind.
He had murdered his brother.
Those who knew better avoided him.
But I was unafraid and giving.
His flame did not burn me,
because I was full of firey wonderment,
overbrimming. A bright
flame of anger, arousal and innocence.
6.
His bony sagging arse galloped the maze.
A guide to the land that foretold my end.
I read it like a seeing stone at Amon Sul.
But I was unable to predict the mischief
and unable to protect myself from it.
So, I went back again and again
until I began to look like him.
My eyes grew large and weak and bulbous.
The hair fell from my flaky scalp.
But there was a light beneath the weariness
that I did not like.
For it was unlike any light of moon or sun
or any light that I had ever known.
It was sickly yellow and confused.
From the marshes of the dead long gone.
It was the little candles of the corpses
that flickered from beneath the ground.
It was the light of doom that shone.
7.
For a long time I empowered my enemies.
My torch went forth into places of darkness,
for I did not want the world to come to this
I did not want Gollum to enter my space.
Yet it was no longer safe to sleep
in the jagged jigsaw of Emyn Muil.
There were wiser eyes inside every crag
and listening ears in every branch above
every shattered pool. I dare not breathe
in such dark, now so still and thoughtful.
Gollum crept up on me one night
while I slept on the jagged rock.
He tried to jump me from the rear.
I said, "Gollum! Get out of there!
Or I'll cut your stinking throat!"
Alas it was not myself who spoke
and not myself who held the knife.
It was the doom upon my heart
that took me into its dreary night
and upon its crooked path.
An illusion that lead me onwards.
8.
As for Gollum, he was a lingering crime.
Yet he snivelled and wept like a victim.
Creeping away on his old webbed feet,
eyes glinting, for fish as cold as his life.
He said, "Yess. We wants all of you, ...
we swears, we wants to be inside the Master
and the preciousss, we bes nice to the ring if the
ring bes nice to hims, Auch! Gollum! ..."
I drew my sword and stood aghast.
"Don't touch me, you vile creature!"
I went to strike this damnation dead,
but I stopped myself for we were the one,
bound by the perfect ring of Sauron.
9.
They warned me when he came ...
slinking onto the shoreline like the drowned.
He stalked the Anduin in decomposition
a rotting body beneath a log.
I heard the splash, but I didn't listen.
I thought this was the best I could do.
They said, "... he is full of wriggling things,"
because they knew that maggots ate him.
I did not know about this, then.
Later, I could see what they meant.
He constructed light so that it veiled his skin.
But it was strictly a surface thing
Beneath the thin transparency,
ten thousand worms were writhing ...
They could not help but be themselves.
He could not help now who he was.
I was angered at first sight.
But then I finally pitied him.
For this world is constructed of queer light
and things we would not have close to us.
How often they crept up and tried to get in.
We must take up positions of long defense,
while treating the Gollum with compassion.
So I did not slay him when I had the chance.
For I was not to deal out death and judgment.
That was left to a power greater than us both.
10.
The creature has his part to play
but it was hard to set him free.
I barely knew my own reflection.
I was only half of who I used to be,
until the great undying took me
and I emerged like a new dawn.
But Gollum escaped into his doom.
He was always slinking off on his own.
I pitied whoever would follow him.
The moon and sun foretold his end.
He was bound to end up lost in time.
He slipped and leapt into the flame.
