Denmark, 788 AD

you know its the chemicals
the acids and the alkaloids
arranged through the centuries—

maybe I knew you in the blood
in a cave/blue metal rock lit by
the lightening of a coastal storm
maybe you were wet with the sea
but I said it doesn't matter
and it didn't, then

now, you won't trust me
and I won't trust you
I don't even trust myself
afraid of that bersarkr
who's cock is only another hammer,
pretending its lightening is magic

I knew your blood
your slit, swollen with the true god,
sodomy was the only realm
that wouldn't remind me of my lack

no wonder man is restless
he has no home in him, no womb

next time
it will be in a boat
& when I die, you die
this is just a prediction
of course

I have written many poems that have dream visions at their core. And many of these dream visions have to do with being a Danish viking from around the time of the Danelaw. This was true 35 years ago, and it is still true today. I'm sure it fulfills some sort of weird need to contact a previous mode of human existence. Whatever. This piece once again talks a great deal about my relationship with Alison Gaughan. I recognise more than ever that she too came from the viking experience in the british isles.

The wearing of the bear skin, the bersark, was a way of allowing the rapaciousness of nature to inhabit the warrior. You became the bear. Thus, the need to be "divine" flows from this existence in the natural world as that great creature, the Bear. But putting on the bear skin allowed the wearer to murder without human feeling. The hammer is obviously a Thor reference. The acids and the alkaloids refer to the steps in the double helix, the ladder of reference for the physical being that is the human. I believe strongly in racial memory, the encoding of our ancestor's existence in our DNA. This explains a lot about my dreams and my desires.

It is interesting to me the implicit recognition in this piece that what I wanted from her, which she was never willing to even go near, was to have a child. Having a child is an odd theme in her poetry; it comes up again and again, but in her life she struggled against the concept. Eventually, after I no longer knew her, she finally did have a child in her later life. I knew several women from my generation who did that. A chancy thing, but there you go. She had a boy. If we had reproduced I am certain we would have had a girl child. How do I know something like this? I have seen that child in my dreams. Too bad, I guess. But once again, I find myself leaving by the back door.