When a laugh crinkles
my eyes to glint wild, know
I hold you close. To nights
dedicated to dreaming you
into the pores of my being,
I keep you prisoned. In
between the layers of skin,
of my face, I have you
enshrined. A mausoleum
of buried tears that surge
out no more. The identity
I now am, just one, is
an independence of heart
from its chest of safety’s
escapism.
my eyes to glint wild, know
I hold you close. To nights
dedicated to dreaming you
into the pores of my being,
I keep you prisoned. In
between the layers of skin,
of my face, I have you
enshrined. A mausoleum
of buried tears that surge
out no more. The identity
I now am, just one, is
an independence of heart
from its chest of safety’s
escapism.
Yosiyahu ("Josiah" -- "healed by Yah) was the grandson of Manasseh, the king of Judah who had restored the worship of Baal and Asherah, sponsored the Assyrian astral cult, and participated in sacrificing children to Moloch. When his son Amon, who had continued his father's religious practices, was assassinated by his servants,he was succeeded by his 8-year-old son Josiah. After a decade of rule he ordered the kohen gadol,the high priest, to renovate the temple, which led to the discovery of the lost Book of Deuteronomy which Joshua had received from Moses. Josiah responded by removing the worship of Baal and Asherah, destroying shrines in Beer-sheba and Samaria, reinstituting Pesaḥ (Passover celebrations), returning the Ark of the Covenant (which held the 10 Commandments and other artifacts) to the temple, executing pagan priests, and exhuming the bones of dead priests and burning them on their altars. The last righteous king of Judah, in 609 BCE he was mortally wounded at Megiddo by Egyptians who passed through his kingdom to support the Assyrians against the Babylonians. "And [the prophet] Jeremiah lamented for Josiah: and all the singing men and the singing women spake of Josiah in their lamentations to this day, and made them an ordinance in Israel: and, behold, they are written in the lamentations" (2 Chronicles 35:25).
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