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.

Moon's Lady, 1977

Mark me well Moon's Lady
as you sit on your gold throne
wearing your ghost tiara
ovular like your womb
My hands have sharpened the blade
during the passage of a
thousand days
and you may occupy
the turned away face of the lunar
sphere, and I may not understand
what I cannot see
but your murder has come to me
as a sacred act
I only do what I do out of
the love you have misplaced

and though it may not come to you
this way, I know I am
magician/warrior, divine bear,
occupier of these words
discoverer-murderer of
you in your lunar pose


This piece features the first use of "divine bear" in my work. I discovered the phrase while perusing a book of names in Knoepfle's office at SSU one day. I looked in the OED and got the same info there. Of course I told Knoepf about it and he was impressed with the implications. Poets you know. The poem is clearly another round in the Alison/Tim story, the one where we talked about sex as violence, because, as catholics, it certainly was violent for us. I think a lot of people in the D/s world (dominance/submission for you innocents) come from a catholic background. Always trying to figure out how to live in a world where pain is method of achieving grace.

Lunar references are meant to point to the feminine, to the "other" as Simone deBeauvoir writes in the Second Sex, a book that had a profound effect on me. With that in mind, the last line posits a masculine sense for the "victim" here, implying her feminine self was a "pose" which needed to be murdered. Early goddess religion stuff wandering through there, as well. That comes from Alison's repeated dreams about red-headed priestess doing human sacrifice. There is some sense of that in early celtic archeaology. Certainly the celts did sacrifice humans (peat bog people). And it is quite probable they had priestesses doing the sacrificing. The red-headed part is also interesting. Alison herself was a striking blonde in the old days. I'm sure her hair has darkened somewhat, though being a classicly vain woman she probably colors it. Clearly Alison's real roots come through Ireland, but probably, genetically she came from the Vikings that conquered and ruled Ireland and who brought the blue eyed blonde genes into that pool. I've been reading Cadfael's Summer of the Danes, and there is much reference to the blonde nordic viking women from Ireland. No surprise then. AsBjorn is certainly Danish, through northern england (the Danelaw, 850-1060 roughly). So far enough back we probably had ancestral stroking going on. My feelings for Alison seemed to come from deep inside, so I suppose racial memory is a possibility. Or reincarnation. Or some damn thing. I just hope I don't go through this in another lifetime. That's a desperate concept.

The Hammer Sets the Scene

This time, dressed in snow, winter
1977. Cat on the sofa, yellowed lamplight
while I put these words in clouded cold
flourescence. Pat at the dining room table.
Dramatic readings of Plath, set off, in sets
against her furnitures—snow, on the outside;
the diabetics gonna drive in
from Pawnee, gonna claim his glory
it's only, for me, an ancient story
of one who'd tell his friends
I have to leave & have no place
for you, this evening. The vikings, my team,
fool the elements and odds
by acting like I feel, foolish and drunk.
The opponents are like light bulbs
burning as the cat wakes up, turns
around and finds her fear confirmed.
She goes back to sleep. She dreams, not of me
but of cats who think their fears ephemeral.
The snow comes like white reality
so thick your arm can slice the air,
the hammer cutting the scene
in sets. I had my time returned.
The boys plays capitalist,
innocently thinking, this is it, this must be
how it is. The cigarette smoke
is a temptress while the vikings fail
to score, the clock whispering,
I've got you chained. I know your real names.
I know why you hate me. It's not surprising.
If I could, I would hate myself. See
inside. Always trying to see inside.
AMF introduces major voices from an
invisible world: cervantes? shakespeare?
I doubt any of us
make the difference, clear the
stuff out of the road. Make any
differences. As usual,
the poets are sad, are new, are
misunderstood. No one cares
and frankly no one should. The time is used.
The snow is one dimensional.
A representation of the world inside.
Subatomic structure.
Who knows? No questions. Assembled
phrass in another phony's stupid
notebook. Time betters spent
playing Monopoly with the kids.
But no one cares for words,
anymore, and figures disappear
like this snow, by Thursday.

Pat's husband, who she remained married to most of the time she lived with me, Larry Smith, was a diabetic who moved from Springfield to a small town, Pawnee, to protect the virtue of his mall-girl vixen daughter, Anne Keats Smith. Pat Smith had finished her first novel manuscript at this point and was typing it up. She never typed any of my books up. Becky Bradway typed up one, Stones Out of Time, but I think it disturbed her so much she never went there again. I never typed anything up. I was, and am, a lousy typist. If I had had a PC I might have gotten some manuscripts together. Who knows? In any case it is interesting to note the references to professional football in this poem (the vikings), used metaphorically to speak both to my heritage and to the psychic place I was occupying at that point. The children playing Monopoly would be my son, Joel, and Pat's boy, Jake Smith.