Matthew Arnold's Great Essay

When the doing fails and the Hebraic command
goes unheeded, my right hand quakes
and shivers from fear and I turn toward the other--
the Hellenic release, the sinister side--
and seek solace in the unreal.
The poem contains the not-doing
while alluding to the doing. The script,
a liquid sculpture, stains the page.
Arnold engineered the seesaw;
he saw the necessity in structure
balanced among the ancients. Stevens
picked it up like a fumbled ball
and ran with it, speaking its division
over and over in one guise or another.
He found release in the up and down strokes;
and threaded the needle with its theme
like James and Carlyle before him,
the great Peripatetics.

La Ronde

From the fire comes the shadow.
From the shadow comes the silhouette.
From the silhouette comes the story.
From the story comes the tale.
From the tale comes the myth.
From the myth comes the gods.
From the gods comes man.
From man comes the fire.

Summer 1958

He shot a single round
into the silent wood
on a summer's eve.
The bullet smashed limbs
and something substantial fell
to the shadowed ground--
a great silhouette
shaded gray in the dusk.
He guessed it was a bird.
Night descended
and he thought
he heard weeping
in the woods.
He begged leave
to look
but it was late
and they refused.
The next morning
he searched
for spoor
but found nothing
but fallen limbs,
dead leaves,
and pine needles.
The darkness dressed
a dire drama;
the sun
defined
a summer's day.

Sins of the Father-A review of Gav Thorpe's "Malekith"

I was very anxious to read Gav Thorpe's new novel "Malekith." In fact, I haunted the bookstores until I found one in Austin at Book People. I quickly started it, although I was already two-thirds through a biography of Robert Frost. It was a good read and I quickly submitted a review to Amazon.com. Here is the review.

Although Gav Thorpe's new novel is entitled, "Malekith," its scope is greater than the story of one man. Instead, it delineates the development of the Warhammer world as we know it and recounts the rise and fall of Malekith. In a sense, the story of Malekith is a tragedy rather than an epic. Although the novel has "epic" qualities--the expansion of the elves and the exploration of the unknown world--it is ultimately the story of one man's greed and lust for power. Like Macbeth, a great warrior is lured from the light to the dark by greed and the ministrations of a woman. In Malekith's case it is the greed and ambition of his Mother, Morathi, that taunts him, goads him, and tricks him. Thorpe's Malekith, however, is not one dimensional. Throughout the novel, the reader feels that the means, no matter how despicable, have within Malekith's twisted thinking a logical and noble end--to protect the elves from the Chaos gods. It is this element that raises Thorpe's novel from simply being a good Warhammer story to being a great Warhammer story.

The first novel of the planned trilogy begins with the end of Aenarion and concludes with the death of Bel Shanaar, the Phoenix King. The narrative involves four major set pieces: the expansion of the elves in the east and the alliance with the dwarves; Malekith's exploration of the west and the Chaos waste; Malekith's war against the cultists in Nagarythe; and the betrayal of the Phoenix King.

Thorpe handles the exploration of the east and the establishment of the elven colonies in the old world brilliantly. His description of the dwarven cities is meticulous in its detail. However, the dwarven segment is not simply a side show; it is important to the development of Malekith's character and to the reader's understanding of that character. Although Malekith's anger and ambition are apparent from the beginning of the novel, Malekith truly respects the dwarves and their king. At the end of Part One, Malekith mourns for his lost friend and intends to honor his oath to the Snorri Whitebeard. However, the next section of the novel finds Malekith on his way to the Chaos wastes in the west, where he discovers an ancient city of the Old Ones and discovers a magic circlet that imbues him with new power and insight into the threat of the Chaos gods. From this point on, Malekith moves toward his inevitable fate. His hubris ultimately leads him to the Shrine of Asuryan.

As I read the novel I was struck by several things: the psychological complexity of Malekith's character; the clear detailed descriptions of all the locations; the distinct personality and character of the various Warhammer races; an abiding continuity to Warhammer lore and fluff; and the lucid prose. I have read most of Gav Thorpe's work and I think this may be his best. I am quite anxious to read the second volume of the trilogy.

I highly recommend this novel to both fantasy lovers and gamers. The Warhammer intellectual property is so rich and so developed that it transcends tie-in fiction. With the Time of Legends series, it seems Black Library has decided to up the ante; to create epic works that can proudly compete with any non-IP fantasy fiction. As a companion piece to this work I recommend Graham McNeill's "Guardians of Ulthuan," and "Heldenhammer," Mike Lee and Dan Abnett's Malus Darkblade series, Mike Lee's "Nagash the Sorcerer," and Nathan Long's "Elfslayer."

An Aphorism

Order and doing
purchases peace
for the purblind
who fear idleness.
Age bears sorrow,
silence and sin
through memory--
misplaced then made.
Doing and order
embrace
youth as imagined,
existing in chaos's
grip.
Reconciliation
thinks not
nor dreams.

Fox-clock

Fox-clock has no face,
no hands, no springs,
no gears. And yet, the fox
awakes with the morning sun,
hunts under the moon's mellow light,
dines on chickens, ducks, and eggs,
dozes in the forest's green shadow,
mates in the farmer's glen,
births in a shallow hidden den,
and dies without fear
or imminent dread
of its inevitable end.

Winter Hunts

Wolf-words weary elk-bulls
worrying them until they fall,
their hamstrings sprung,
their feet odd,
and their rhythm dead.
Ground squirrels sleep
silent under leaf and moss,
while bears birth cubs
in shallow caves
and snow blankets
the north face of a higher glen.
Inertia is the greenest god
draining words white.
Gasping glossolalia
surfeits all sentence sense
until the silver thread
of their dying sibilance
stretches as far back
as forward. Only fatigue
traps the line at full stop.
Only spring or hunger
wakes the hibernating beasts.

Will

Wolves hunt in packs
but they weary
of the long chase.
Others never tire.
Their will,
fueled by desire,
drives them on,
until their prey
falls helpless,
its heart
bursting
from the run.

Petroglyphs arrives at Amazon

Sound Considered

Shipwreckt
sits
on the fringe
of the palms’
skirt
and ponders
the sense
and sound
of wind
and surf
surging
against
shore.

Kavka/Jackdaw

The jackdaw,
born Kavka
in Prague,
fractures
a semiotic
chirp
that sounds
Latin
not Greek
and festers
black
like a Chow's
tongue.

Proper Study

Study
red fox
in winter
rather than Caliban,
and discover
what nature
in an unnatural
world
struggles
to be.

The Shipwreck's Dream

The shipwreck dreams of Abraham's sacrifice.
He awakens with a cough and these words:
"Abraham walks on the edge of his knife."
Meanwhile, the monkeys gambol in the palms;
the stream rushes to the sea;
snails flourish under red leaves;
and turtles lay eggs in the sand.
The night passes;
the moon wanes;
the mountain's gray silhouette
casts its shadows over the beach.

Snail Math

A mathematical design:
draw
a line
from Alpha to Zed
to illustrate
the silver thread
that shimmers
at dawn,
and marks
the finitude
of the snail's
journey
between the grass
and the leaf.

Island Dwelling

Within the shipwrecked,
the island dwells.

Below clouds salt
a tremulous sky
and coral embraces
gastropods
as jungles
fringe
mountain roots.

Four-fold divinities
gibber like ghosts
on Pentecost
and flying fish
flutter
like ox tongues
on a hot griddle.

The Shipwreck's Agenda

Ten years
from the day
of the shipwreck,
the shipwrecked
gleaned
a glimpse
of a gray sail
on green horizon.
As he cleared
his pale dwelling
of pink shells,
buried bottles,
sour weed
and fetid fish,
he brushed
away the vision
like a fly
near his ear
or an ant
on his leg.

Furnace Talk

To tap
the vein
requires
a pick
and ax,
a shovel
and a crowbar.
Dug-stone,
silent
as ore
out of the furnace,
sighs
sibilant
before the steam.

The Man who Walks on his Head

Even though the year 1967, was dark and disastrous for Paul Celan, it was also a year of doing and creating, of writing and translating; it was a year of poetry that continued and built upon the "breathturn," which he demonstrated in his work produced in 1963 and 1964.

The year began with the publication of the French translation of the presentation he made in Darmstadt in October 1960, upon his receipt of the Georg Buchner Prize. The essay, entitled "The Meridian," is about art generally and poetry specifically. In the essay or speech, Celan writes, inter alia, that "a man who walks on his head, ladies and gentlemen, a man who walks on his head sees the sky below, as an abyss."

I postulate that much of Celan's poetry is about the vision of the abyss seen when we adjust our point of view. This adjustment can be drastic--for instance, when we stand on our head--or minor, when we turn our head and gaze out of the far corner of our eye. The change in perspective alters our view and refreshes our vision. This refreshment may be pleasing or shocking. It doesn't matter; it awakens the mind to the strangeness of the new and the different.

When something is new and different, the reader tends to concentrate. It is the concentration or attention that Celan believes the poem seeks. Quoting Kafka, he says: "attention is the natural prayer of the soul." Consequently, is he saying obliquely that poetry is soul-involving? Isn't it true that when soul is activated it grows, strengthens, and deepens. Poetry that arrests our attention, I postulate, deepens soul.

Celan's concept of arrest is described metaphorically as a "breathturn." He writes: "Who knows, perhaps poetry goes its way--the way of art--for the sake of just such a turn?"

Paul Celan and Amenta

While re-reading Paul Celan’s book of poetry, Lightduress, I was quite taken with the five line poem-- Die lehmigen Opfergüsse/ the loamy offering downpours. This poem, evocative of fall, seems to turn geography upon its head. From its image cluster I intuited that loam, crawling with snails, formed a ceiling and that a fallen blackberry leaf flies against gravity toward heaven. Consequently, I imagined a world where the earth was above, and heaven was below.

This intriguing and somewhat numinous image seemed familiar. Had I heard it before?

At first, I thought the image came from the I Ching but with a little digging I found it in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. In Amenta, the land of the dead, the earth is above and the sky below. Suddenly, the poem opened up and I had a clue in which to begin my explication of the text.

The Toad

The toad
squatted
in black ooze
as the Nile
flowed.
Empires
expired
and rotted,
attracting green
flies
the toad speared
with a sticky
tongue.

Oskar as Athena; Günter as Zeus

The two sipped their aperitifs; one gazed outward, while the other turned inward. Günter noted a tall, thin woman with dyed blonde hair and red lips entering the brasserie with a short rotund man, wearing a black suit, black tie, and a white shirt. His thinning hair was pulled back and shining from pomade and reflected light. She placed a manicured hand on his round shoulders and pouted. Her nails glimmered red against his gray skin and Günter thought of Athena springing forth from Zeus’ head. Her imagined armor gleamed in the light of the Lipp and he sighed, wishing for her attention. He decided to use her in his novel that was percolating to the surface of his conscious mind. He imagined sitting at his typewriter tapping the scene out beneath the single electric light that hung from his dingy ceiling on the Rue d'Italie. He prayed for the gods of modernism to aid him in his creation.

Paul did not notice the woman; instead, he reflected on the phrase “head-birth;” his black eyes glazed over as he turned his vision inward, tracing the roots of the expression, seeking the source of the myth of the birth of the parthenogenic goddess. He immediately thought of Hermes as mid-wife and imagined Athena, as a reincarnation of Neith, the Egyptian goddess of war, who nursed a crocodile at her breast. Paul was a master of slow-reading and metaphors. Already his mind hopped from stone to stone of the mephitic scree of archaic images that lay submerged in his memory. Already, he was cataloging images to produce a poem of disparate associations. He etched crocodiles and ankhs, goddesses and shields, into a fabric of metaphors to express his vision of being. He sank deeper, looking for original images in the ooze of the Nile. He scraped his poem onto papyrus; he employed hieroglyphs to strike the flint. Embers and sparks flew in the summer night and mosquitos buzzed through the marshes.

Gunter Arrives Before the Flood

The rain stopped for a minute or two and the sun seeped through a break in the clouds to illuminate a slice of the pavement in front of the Brasserie Lipp. Paul experienced a glint of light in the corner of his left eye and raised his head from his notebook to glimpse a momentary illumination in the street. Then, thunder rumbled, shaking the foundation of the old building, and the rain returned in iron sheets.

Before returning to his notes on the shipwrecked, Paul recognized a short figure in a wrinkled beige raincoat running across the wide boulevard. The man, with a large pipe clenched between his teeth, dodged cars and jumped puddles, heading inexorably toward the entrance of the Lipp. It was Günter, late as usual, he thought, running to catch up with a deadline he had already missed.

Günter stopped outside the restaurant, underneath its awnings, and peeled off his wet coat. He shook it several times before he folded it over his left arm. He faced the glass door and Paul watched as Günter’s dark eyes blinked, owl-like, twice behind black horn-rimmed spectacles. The well-lit Lipp and the dark rain-soaked night created a mirror out of the front door and Paul knew Günter could not see into the restaurant. Instead, he stood before the mirror and prepared himself for his late entrance. Gazing at his image, he ran a fat hand through his thick black hair, removed his wooden pipe, and deposited it into the right-hand pocket of his gray suit. Beside the crumpled suit, Günter wore a pale blue shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, gold cufflinks, and scuffed brown shoes. For finishing touches, he rubbed his left hand over his thick Nietzsche-like mustache and pulled the suit forward at the labels, as if to make room for his bullish neck and shoulders.

Once inside, the maître’d moved forward, his hand outstretched, as if Hemingway himself had entered the room. He took Günter’s coat and pulled out the banquette table to allow him to edge onto Paul's left. The two now sat like an old couple, ensconced in their place of honor, near the door. The placement was significant to all cognoscenti; the two mattered. Their place had been earned. The management placed them to see and be seen.

“May I have towel, Maurice?” asked Günter in his heavily accented French.

The maître’d snapped a finger and a middle-aged waiter with thinning hair dyed coal-black rushed forward with a linen towel. Günter rubbed his head down roughly and then asked for Paul’s comb. He pulled the thick hair back in several rough movements. Paul noted his hands were stained black and yellow from ink and nicotine.

“Your hands look as if you have been writing.” Paul said in German.

“I have. But not just writing, though. I am producing a baby, a monstrous baby. It’s something different from anything else I have written.”

The waiter re-appeared and asked if they wanted an aperitif.

Günter said, slapping his meaty hands together, “Let’s have two Kir Royales. I feel like celebrating the head-birth of my baby.”

Paul at the Brasserie Lipp

Paul arrived at Brasserie Lipp around 18:30, about thirty minutes before his agreed meeting with Günter.

As the maître’d seated him in one of the banquettes in the entrance, cold rain drizzled down on the gray sidewalks, driving the tourists back to their hotels. He smiled wryly because he didn’t like tourists, especially American tourists; their congregating in front of the café to soak up the remaining DNA of the lost generation somehow offended him.

Paul was not immune to the allure of past writers’ haunts nor absorbing their DNA. That was why he was at the Lipp rather than some more modest café in his neighborhood. Perhaps that was the real reason why he looked down on the tourists huddling beneath the awning, rain dripping off their noses, waiting for a table that the haughty maître’d may or may not grant them, because he knew he was not much different from them. The only difference, he rationalized, was that he had published a handful of poems in Germany. Somehow that legitimized him, whereas these others were simply that-the others.

As he waited for Günter he extracted a moleskin notebook from the inside pocket of his tweed jacket and a Pelikan fountain pen he bought in a shop in the center of Frankfurt. He was working on something he believed might be important: a metaphysical conceit he thought of while reading Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe and the poetry of Emily Dickinson. He summarized the conceit easily and succinctly: poetry is a message in a bottle, cast into the sea by the poet, to float alone and find its own fate.

Of course, like every conceit, he built upon it and refined it. He even imagined writing a whole series of poems about a shipwrecked and his struggle to live within the confines of a deserted island.

In fact, this morning while shaving he thought of a corollary image, which he thought opened up a new avenue of philosophical development, an avenue which he wanted to discuss with Günter. Suppose a young, idealistic shipwreck throws a bottle into the sea and then over the years forgets about it. He goes about his work on the island, doing everything he can to survive. Years later, he is walking on the beach at dusk, when he sees a glint in the sand. He hurries to it and digs it out with his staff. He uncovers a blue-green glass bottle. He examines it and discovers its mouth is sealed with beeswax; he peels the seal back with his long yellow nails and extracts a piece of rolled bark. On the bark he reads a message in smoky charcoal: “I sailed on the HMS Manifest Destiny in 1952. The ship sank in the China Sea; all hands were lost except me. Shipwrecked.”

The man is startled. He pities the poor man, who, so many years ago, became shipwrecked at the same time as he. A man just like him cast a message into the world but unfortunately his message landed on another deserted island. He wonders if he still lives, and then it dawns on him that he is the shipwrecked. With this realization, his hope crumbles and he begins to sob; tears stream down his face. He is alone and the message in the bottle has “unconcealed” his condition in the world. He is a shipwrecked on a deserted island. The sea surrounds him and marks his boundaries. The sky forms his roof and he is mortal, fated to die alone. The help he waited for will not come. With the truth now revealed, he returns to his life on the island, where he dwells.

Message in a Bottle

The blue message
sealed
in a clear bottle
by a layer
of yellow beeswax
chewed slowly
in the green spring
unconceals
in black winter
my red shipwreck
to the other.

Thoughts on the Primal Word

The primal word arrests our attention when it arrives in our conscious mind unbidden and unexpected. It appears first as glyphs or images that one may understand through emotion.

The primal word once risen exists for a brief moment-like the may fly-in a world similar to Babel, a mythical city where all spoke the language of the one.

The primal word appears as an emotional hieroglyph that the one translates; just as the ancient Egyptian priests translated the hieroglyph into demotic.

The primal word is soaked in emotion and meaning, which the one must distill in order to imbibe and then understand the message intellectually.

The primal word over time and through translation loses its emotional power; however, it may carry an intellectual power thereafter.

Sometimes the primal word is adopted by the one and concretized into a religion or an ideology.

In order to remain authentic the one must avoid the concrete image and seek new appearances of the primal word.

The story of the Babel Tower is an object lesson on the concretization of the primal word. Its destruction is a metaphor for a methodology to revive the emotion and meaning of the word. Sometimes neologisms are necessary to revive thoughts and shatter concrete ideas.

Heidegger's language and Celan's poetry are examples of a movement to make an opening for the primal word and to re-make old language.

Pharos

Pharos
shines
on Ouroboros' tail
and greets
Caesar
in his biremes
and Cleopatra
in her rug.

Die Welt

The world
like bread
is made fresh
each day.
Unleavened
it lasts
no longer
than memory.
Seasoned
with reason
it blackens
and crumbles.

Alexandria

The silver trout,
like a slender thread,
arrows
through an oblong eye
of a brass needle,
and threads
an Egyptian done
to a Greek's doing
beyond the edge
of a Roman sea.

Hiking in Germany

Two strangers stroll
side by side.
Dappled light dances
on raspberry leaves.
Autumn threatens
to turn green into gold.
What thoughts
do they share
when their hands touch
and then recoil
like purple surf
on Ireland's shadowed shore?

Okeanus

I have uploaded my fantasy novel--Okeanus--on HarperCollins new beta site--Authonomy--at http://www.authonomy.com/.

Inked Clay

Silence elevates hermetic supplicants
on feast days and summer solstice.
From dreams they dance
on darkened feet across scree
to the daemon's dire door.
Silver shamans blow rams horns
to succor the winged spirit.
They present him glazed pots
reddened with tattooed sigils,
signifying the poet's primordial words.
He says:
Doing writ, heralds done.
They repeat it
on percussive sand
burned green into glass.
They seal it
like preserves;
the wide mouth of the mason jar
covered with mother's cheese cloth.

56

For his birthday, she gifted
him with a raven fetish,
which, when held,
ensorcelled him
in a shadow
of elder thoughts.
Its shadow spread
and draped
across his shoulders
like Balzac's cloak
cast in bronze
by Rodin,
the French mage.

Poet

He sat and read
his long poems
on a wooden stool
he carved from pine.
His lips purpled
as he scanned
primordial words
and his tongue
shadowed
like a Chow's.

Hunger

He yearned to be seen;
she hungered to be read.
It was as simple as that.
He published a little magazine;
she wrote sinister poems.
It was as simple as that.
He was twenty two and lonely;
she was eighteen and sly.
It was as simple as that.
She became pregnant
and killed herself.
He lived a long life
in her shadow.
It was as simple as that.

The Hunter

qui perd gagne, qui gagne perd
Cocteau

He left on the hunt three days ago,
with three dogs, a bundle of spears,
and a leather bag, hanging at his side.
Now, he sits on a red rock,
watching a crimson sun
sink into a purple sea.
She stood with a child balanced
on her right hip, her left hand
chiding him for waiting so late
in the season; the burnt orange
leaves falling in the background
crowned her strawberry hair,
and freckled brow.
He hesitated,
he now thought,
because he dreaded the killing,
the washing of his spear tips
in the white bull’s blood.
Did she not understand his soul
attached to the dying beast’s
last breath and that the curved hook
left a pain so sharp in his left
arm he saw only black?
With his head bowed,
he turned toward home,
his spears clean and dry,
while the first flakes floated
down and melted on his shoulders.

Wolves

to Julia and Ira

Fifty years ago, she was my sole companion.
When she became sick, they prescribed sulfa drugs,
which damaged her kidneys.
I was alone so they sent me to the woods,
where the old man appeared on a mule,
carrying a rifle in his right hand.
He wore a straw hat and overalls
he ordered from a Sears catalogue.
He chewed tobacco,
while he read the Bible.
There was no place for me,
so I slept on an army cot in the parlor,
where I dreamed of wolves.
Each night I looked deeply into their eyes
and read their thoughts
until finally my eyes turned yellow
and my nose resembled a snout.
For fifty years I have run with the pack.
Not long ago I faltered and fell
and ended up in a hospital,
lying next to a man who was dying.
In a febrile dream a gray wolf ate my liver
and I felt an excruciating pain.
When I awoke my roommate was dead.
The nurses whispered prayers
in Spanish as they removed his body.
When I was alone I sniffed
and caught the rank smell of the wolves
that had come that night and taken him.
I could feel them watching me
with their yellow eyes,
asserting their dominance,
asking when I would give up
and leave the pack.
I barred my teeth
and raised my head
and howled.

Icarus's Lament

At the journey's end
he awoke to find
a pile of feathers
beneath his perch.
The heat
of the summer
solstice
melted the wax
that secured
his ivory pinions,
freeing the crow
feathers
to fall
like frozen flakes
in winter.
Thus his childhood
ended with a failed
experience
of flight.
Days of toil
stretched before him.
Ravens laugh
and crows caw
their ridicule.

Kesselschlacht

The circle closes
and centers
all within.
Soon all food
will be eaten,
all fuel consumed,
all contact
broken.
Then cannibals appear
where men
formerly stood
and fear
stews
flesh
and flays
a flutist's
frame
clean.
Grey bones
and marrow
bleach white
and mix
with snow.

Next ten stanzas of Deutschland Sommer 2008

XXI

Interpret
loneliness
and obsession
with greed
as a father
fails
to flee
poverty.

The patrimony
places form
against
a strategy
of lifelong
worthlessness.


XXII

Paulus
born
during Prussia's
rise
serves
culture's norms.


Cannibalism
exists
in shining ranks
as winter
falls
like wolves
on dying sheep.


XXIII

As Scholl's father,
Paulus creates
the white rose.
His fear
flings
the three hundred thousand
to their fate
and emboldened students
say what others dare not.

Personal fear
subjected to madness
threads
the string
of heresy.

What did he fear?
Frozen steppes,
Russian camps,
or a madman's rage.
Did he imagine
the blade falling
onto children's necks?

XXIV

He defended
beyond human limit.
Weakness
caused him
to wait
as dying men
scraped
flesh
from bones.

XXV

Fear brings bravery,
as a man screams
and pounds his fist
against fist.

XXVI

Childhood traumas
birth
these men
of the present,
who obsess
over
the hidden past.


XXVII


He defends order
in a chaotic rant,
the other
stands
ordered
in chaos.

Severed heads
shine
and spurt
blood,
as leaflets fall
from Liberators.

XXVIII

Constructed dreams
stand
as long
as dreamers sleep.

Awake the dreamer
with the real.

XXIX

Madness protects
the most fearful
in an ordered
amber.

XXX

The guillotine
severs
light from dark,
shuts the eyes,
and stills all thoughts.

Sharpened
and efficient
it falls
like entropy,
as the discarded corpse
begins the journey
anew.

Next Ten Paragraphs---Deutschland Sommer 2008

XI

Can I not release
the arrow from the composite bow
and drive the iron shaft
deep into the stag’s
crimson flesh?

XII

Drinking weissen Bier
mixed with lemonade
on Zurich’s boulevard,
I feel the girl’s brown hand
on my back
pushing me north
toward Suttgart’s
valley and Freud’s
dark tunnel.

XIII

Wolves run in the Schwarzwald.
While time ticks away,
wolf-girls in Dirndls
dance down wind
of the lone wolf.

XIV

A cannibal sees only edible parts;
wolf-girls seek status in the pack.
Will the ordered
share the same plane with daemons?

XV

Do not seek the cannibal’s
soul in his eyes.
He sees only flesh
and tastes only blood.

XVI

The Paulus effect
defines the fact
that honorable men
receive lies from weak men
humbled by the reality
of their lives.

Business
corrupts us
and wolf-girls
bind us,
as ravens
stay our hand.

XVII

The snail slides
along the frozen edge
of the fennel’s
leaf as the funicular
flees the flatland.

Wolf-girls follow
the scent of the raven’s wing
and light a candle
in Montmartre.

XVIII

The brightest persona
hides the darkest shadow.

XIX

From Dali
he stole the snail
and from Jung
he followed the raven
to the wolf’s door.

He lived alone
in a world
growing darker.

XX

Deutschland soured
the madness
in his blood.

He left the cannibal
hungering for more,
as the wolf-girl
descended
into his shadow’s
ruthless
solitude.

Deutschland Sommer 2008

I just returned from Germany, where I had a burst of poetical energy. The result is a very long poem, influenced by my eternal fascination with the theme of order verses chaos. Here is the first ten parts.

Deutschland Sommer 2008

to Detlef

I

In a moment of doing,
the anxiety
of not doing
arrests
a dangerous
and restless sigh.

II

Chaos balances
a guilty respite
beneath lacquered trees,
forged out of gray
stones
on an estate
in Frankfurt.

Porsches parked
placidly
under linden trees
await the patrons
of the sculpture garden.

Deutschland defeats Portugal
in a solid press
against the goal,
unexpected by the Latins
with their vibrant stance.

Turkey awaits their turn.

III

Dynamic chaos
as quality
espouses darkness,
while a static embrace
affects the old regime
years before the Chancellor.

Bismarck creates a social order,
which challenges the Victorians.

IV

The white rose stands
against the stones
of the Mariensplatz,
while rain
falls on Bogenhausen
greening the oily boots
with slime.

The waitress in the dirndl
howls like a wolf
and for the first time
the sign of the wolf-girl
appears as a sigil
in the sky.

V

The city of the white rose
awaits the return
of Celan’s bane
and Grass
twists
history’s verdict
with slick
refusals.

VI

Balance
as theme
resides
in most dreams;
its images
speak real
words
in existence’s fantasy.

VII

Parker Posey
told me
in a dream
to read Pirsig’s Lila
and I did,
thus the flow
from the center
toward the surface
forces me to ford
the unconscious
stream
that wets
my leg.

VIII

The museum
featured the myth
of Marsyas,
an old theme,
that reminds me
the puer
reeks of dynamic
quality,
while the Senex
sinks
into static mud
and stinks like
a sty
before it hardens
into rock
that forms
the base for all launches
into primal space.

IX

Static quality
traps wolf-girls
in a singular,
sinister madness.

Dynamic quality
points
like an iron-tipped
arrow
shot forward
into the hollow blackness
of the universe.

X

To proceed forward
we must grasp
dangerous toys
like a child.

An Aphorism

Order
and doing
buy peace
for the troubled
who fear
idleness.
Age breeds
idleness,
sorrow,
thought,
silence,
and memory--
lost and found.
Doing
and order
embrace
youth imagined,
living
in chaos's
embrace.
Memory
thinks not,
nor dreams.

Harald Hardradi

In conducting some research for my next book, I spent some time reading about the Norse King Harald Sigurdsson or Harald Hardradi. Three things about him impressed me. One, he was a poet, writing both poetry and sagas; two, he was a traveler and a mercenary, who served in the Varangian Guard in Byzantium and with the Normans in the war against the Arabs in Sicily in 1038; and, three, he possessed an indomitable spirit.

At the age of fifteen, Harald fought with his half-brother, King Olaf the Saint at the battle of Stiklestad. Olaf died in battle and Harald was severely wounded. During his convalescence, he wrote the following poem:

From copse to copse
I crawl and creep
now, worthless.
Who knows
how highly
I'll be prized
some day.

Even in the face of defeat, wounded and hounded, Harald intuits he will be a great man. I find this psychologically and historically interesting primarily because some men blind to their fate and future, facing overwhelming odds and convincing evidence that they are at an end, defeated and despoiled, still have not only hope but the temerity to foresee their future greatness.

Two Short Poems about Circles

Enfleshment

With her back
against mine
the word
enlivens
sound.




The Compass

The steel
point
pierces
a center
and spreads
its legs
until the hollowness
enriches
the nothingness
of something
within the circumference
of the compass'
fleshy reach.

Circle Man

He runs in circles,
while circles turn within me:
wheel upon wheel,
gear meshed into gear,
speared spokes
whirring
in whiteness;
my shadow
dominates
the center
and feeds
off the mechanized
darkness
that times
Time
like a German
metronome.

To Do Not

It has been a long time since I posted here. There is no real reason why; however, I do have some excuses. First, I wrote a story for the Warhammer short story contest, liked it, and then wrote thirty-five thousand words of a Warhammer novel on spec, which I have been serializing to my friends. Second, I wrote a story for the Robert A. Heinlein Centennial contest. In order to do that story justice, I had to re-read a couple of Heinlein novels. Third, I am writing a historical novel about a disaffected Norman Knight that accompanies William the Bastard on his invasion of England in 1066. Fourth, Murder of Crows is putting out a second edition of The White Bull and I have been working with their editors. Fifth, I have become addicted to writing reviews on Amazon. Finally, my poetic muse went underground; however, something floated up from the unconscious this morning. So here it is--"To do not."

The doing
that does
not release
the anxiety
of the not-doing
does not
replace
the experience
of the doing
that does.
To do
that which is done
is the Shaman's
share
of the sleep
that awakes
the bright cusp
of the world
of done, do
and doing.

Repetition

He trapped
himself
within their nylon
fishnet.
Without a clue
he had floundered
up a sandy river
bed, flipping
his fins
frantically
against the course
of his nature,
far removed
from the Anglican Cathedral.
His hook
curved within,
not without,
as he espoused
to all women
he attracted.
They, in blindness,
embraced him
like worms
on this ingrown
barb
while he whined
about nightmares
he dreamed
each night
before curtain call.

An Emerging Theory

I am troubled by the fact that all art is artifice, no matter how hard we try to "keep it real." The beginning of any artistic endeavor soon evolves or devolves into artifice. The artifice arises because of the limitation of our perception, our natural desire to bring order to chaos, the inherent structure of the narrative, and the level of our consciousness. In that regard, the greatest artifice is found at each end of the spectrum of human consciousness. The primitive mind desires magic, whereas the refined consciousness seeks the symbol, the numinous, the archetype. Ironically, the quotidian mind is content to reside in the fact, the so-called real, which is an artifice of culture. As a result of this battle with artifice, which is inevitable, I find myself letting go of the real and moving more to the fantastic. In this movement I find solace in the fiction of Paul Auster, Peter Ackroyd, John Crowley, and Franz Kafka and the poetry of Paul Celan, Bill Knott, Gunter Grass, and Charles Simic.

Snail Silence

The order within him
was so black
it absorbed the sun’s rays.
Bright auras, like moths,
fluttered toward this darkness
until he could no longer
stand the weight
of their anxious
pushing.
In despair,
he cried out to the snail
that slid past on silver thread:
“Why do they press against me so?
What have I done to deserve
such dreadful desire?”

The Myth of the Snail

Each day it journeys
from the rose leaf
to the yard's loam
alone.
Without the help of any god,
it carries a shell
that grows evenly
through the years,
marking the limits
of its world.
Its boundary of being
measures the stretch of silver
between the rose leaf
and the grass blade.

Life on the Under Leaf

They emerge from darkness
crawling across the cement
on the way to the rose garden.
They find their way to the under leaf,
where they sleep through the day
to appear at dusk, to work
their way back to the yard
and the trees. Not once
do they repeat their mathematical
purpose nor speak of their twin
that fades into dark history,
nor do they lecture
on verticality
or the ultimate fate
that awaits the horizon.

Vertical until Horizontal

to Ferdinand Hodler


Anxiety rises like the tide,
overflows its banks,
covers the causeway,
and drowns the rose field.
He grabs his board
and rides the waves,
hanging ten, screaming
all the way to the western shore
where bait shops and trailer parks
sit nestled in contentment.
He runs the board ashore
and stands barefoot
in the white sand,
wiggling his toes.
Two pelicans fly to Cuba.
He studies the horizon,
ready to pit his verticality
against its horizonality
until it delivers
him in the end.

Günter’s Secret

With his left hand
stained yellow
from Schwarzer Krauser,
he pounded stone
and smoothed wet clay
into starving nudes
and granite head stones.
This sinister activity,
he later wrote, emerged
from his singular German virtue:
hard work, everyday, to the end.

A Snail's Tale

A snail on a mirror,
smuggled onto a Russian truck,
one snowy night passes
through the American lines.
That morning it had been a Communist;
by nightfall, it crawled from the polished glass
onto a silk table cloth in Salzburg,
speaking German and telling a strange tale.
It said, “there are two snails:
the one that speaks here to you
and the other, my twin, that lives
on the other side of the projection.
In that alternate world of thrown light,
my double slithers on slime
along a razor’s edge of time
that flows in reverse toward Romania,
where snow buries frigid bodies
crumpled on the side of a ditch,
their eyes perfect calcified shells.”

Günter and Paul in Clichy

A break in the gray skies over the gray stones of Montmartre illuminates Sacre Coeur, which shines like a beacon above the snail shaped map of Paris.

Two men walking on the Rue Lepic look up at the beacon. The short, stout one, with a massive black mustache, makes the sign of the cross, while the tall, handsome one, pulls deeply on his cigarette, a Gauloise. They continue down the street, searching for a clean well lit café where they can share an espresso, a cigarette, and a chat about modern German poetry.

They stop in front of a café that the short stout man sniffs. He enters and walks about smelling the kitchen door, the entrance to the toilette, and the bar. He looks under the tables and runs a fat finger along the edge of the window sill. He grunts his acceptance and takes a booth near the window.

A waiter with a vulpine face, arrives with a huff, and frowns when he hears the German accented French of the stout one. He turns to the other who speaks perfect French, showing his disdain for the boche. The stout one ignores the man’s rudeness; he has accepted the French’s hatred of the Germans. Instead, he pulls a small moleskin sketchbook from his pocket of his tweed jacket and a pelican pen and quickly sketches the man’s fox like face with a few clear lines.

The other, the handsome one, extracts a thick wad of folded papers from the inside pocket of his jacket and places them on the table. They order espressos and a carafe of water and place their cigarettes on the table. The stout one pushes his drawing aside and reaches into his left pocket and produces another moleskin notebook. This one is lined and full of scribbles.

The waiter places the coffees in front of them with a bill, which they both ignore. They intend to order another later. The handsome one with the sad dark eyes begins to read in German, while the stout one watches a woman bend over in the doorway of shop across the way to pour some milk into a saucer for a sick kitten mewing on the sidewalk.

A Snail's Pace

The snail steps on command
and slides along the razor’s edge.
Its day’s work ends well and small.
The hare celebrates,
as it rests
on its racing laurels,
waiting for the tortoise
to bisect
the line of slime
that shines
silver in the sun,
reflecting brown fur
and green shell.

Seeking Celan 1968

The gray stone absorbs
her black lace as silver flakes fall
on the cobblestones near the museum.
Her perfumed thighs
spread by his warm fingers
define the degree
of their digress toward the word,
defined against polished phrases
reflected from Venetian glass.
Its sound like a laural leaf
caught in the fall breeze
soars above a serpentine Seine.
Beginning at La Manche
it arrests itself
beneath the bridge
of his mounting distress.

Resolution 2008

The garden though small
needs tending and time,
while we approach
the world though big
by baby steps.
The fear mongers
and the money men
wait in ambush for fools
taking giant frantic footsteps
without speaking the coda,
the key. Mother may I
protects baby’s foot pads
and seals hermetically the innards
of the rusting ship, sunken to lie
next to Jonah’s leviathan,
our twin who sails west
but arrives in the east
three days late and a dollar short
unexpected, unheralded,
undone, and unknown.

Conjunction

He stands before polished glass
and greets his contrariness.
His simulacra balances on crystal shards
and questions the conjunction
of known and unknown,
of good and evil,
of real and imagined,
and finally of passive
and active energies.
He claps his hands
and his dualities splinter
into sparks of yellow and red
like spent embers
in the darkest night
or twins separated at birth,
alone on the earthen plane.

Projection

The mirror throws
the stone's subtle substance;
a red powder reflected
through his green
eye transforms
iron rods
into gold bars.

The Blond Beast

I have finished the first re-write of Okeanus and have returned to The Blond Beast. Here is a cutting from near the end of the novel.

“Is Simone tied up in this story somehow?”

“Yes. She is very much involved in it. She is a perfect example of the innocence of youth. We arrive on this earth as an offspring of two people, who had a complicated existence and history before we take our first breath. We grow up thinking we are the center of the universe. We never look back and ask where we came from and who we are. We just push forward.

“Children are egotists. They think they are all knowing and universal. Their feelings are the world’s feelings.”

“I wish you could imagine the world in 1933. The people were different; they thought differently. Even the world smelled different. Now it is purified and perfumed. In 1933, you could smell people. There was no air conditioning, no shower in every apartment. People lived closer together, even though there were no cell phones. We wrote letters. We talked to one another. We didn’t spend the evening in front of a television.

“Imagine horse-drawn wagons on the streets of Berlin. Imagine the smell of horse droppings on the cobblestone. Imagine the smells of outdoor privies and coal-burning fires. Imagine butcher shops where the carcass of the dead animals hung in the window. Imagine men in uniform walking up and down the streets in the hundreds, in the thousands. Imagine the smell of fear in the air, as the great Nazi beast began to stir.

“I met your friend Sartre in 1934 in Berlin. He was a smelly little man. Quite unkempt, but smart, very smart. I remember drinking beer with him on the Unter den Linden. He was reading Heidegger and Husserl and he was full of their ideas. I had never heard of Heidegger before, but as Sartre talked about him, I became more excited. He was reading Introduction to Metaphysics. He started talking about Being, and as he talked, there was a light in his eyes. That light was so bright that he saw nothing else around him.”

A waiter appeared and asked if they wanted anything. Löwe ordered a glass of Proseeco and invited Vogel to join him. In the background Vogel heard Bettina laugh and saw her reach out and touch Simone’s arm.

“In those days, Sartre was having an affair with a married Frenchwoman. He told me that she was a ‘contingent love.’ I had never heard that expression before, but I soon experienced what he meant by it.”

He paused to sip his drink and then turned to listen to Simone’s conversation with Asshauer. Vogel was impatient to know what the old man was talking about. He didn’t believe that he was just talking. It seemed to Vogel that Löwe was calculating and sly and that his choice of conversation was designed to tell Vogel something, something that he wanted him to know.

Asshauer stood up abruptly, shook everyone’s hand and then said that he had to rush to the airport to catch his plane. Once he had left, Drago replaced the chair he had moved and Bettina signaled the waiter to bring them menus. Löwe was now sitting next to Simone and it was as if he had forgotten the conversation he was having with Vogel. He was now speaking French fluently and asking Simone about her life in Paris.

“I live in a new area called Le Défense, a high rise.”

“I have seen pictures.” He wrinkled his nose and frowned at the concept of Mitterand’s new Paris. “Why is it always the socialists who build the monuments?”

“Vogel wondered if he was thinking of Mitterand or Hitler or Albert Speer.

“Are your grandparents still living?”

Vogel was perplexed by the non-sequitur and it seemed the question also surprised Simone.

“No.”

“What were their names?”

“Rosenberg and Aschheim.”

“Your father’s mother. What was her name?”

“Martine Lauté.”

“Was she French?”

“She came from France.”

“But was she French?”

Simone looked over at Vogel to see if he was listening. Vogel thought she was saying, with her eyes only, that maybe he was right, that maybe this old man was playing some unknown game with them and they were his victims rather than his interviewers.

“I believe she did live in Berlin for awhile before she returned to Paris. In 1940, she escaped through Spain to Ireland and then to London.”

“Not in 1940 my dear, in 1941.”

“What?” Simone’s mouth fell open.

“May I take your order?” asked the waiter.

Löwe turned to the menu and ignored the look of fear and exasperation on Simone’s face. After ordering, he turned to Vogel and asked, “Did you know that Martine Lauté, the grandmother of Ms. Aschheim, knew both Sartre and Magda Goebbels?”

Vogel heard Simone gasp and then watched, somewhat dumbfounded when she reached out her hand to touch the paper-thin skin of Löwe’s hand. As her long, thin fingers touched his, Vogel imagined he saw a shock shake the old man. How long had it been since someone had touched him? The old man turned toward her and she saw tears in his bright-blue eyes. “You knew my grandmother?” she asked.

“Your grandmother was a friend, someone I met in 1933, in Berlin.”

“You said she knew Magda Goebbels?” asked Vogel, interrupting Simone’s next question.

“Martine Lauté was a student at the Kollmorgen Lyseum, located on Keithstrasse. She was a classmate of Lisa Arlosoroff, a Jewish girl from Königsburg, my mother’s hometown, and Magda Friedländer, who later became Magda Goebbels.”

Simone’s head was buzzing with questions; however, within the chaos of her thoughts, one idea emerged as her most pressing concern – had this interview been simply a ruse to get her here at this table in Florence sitting next to this frail old man?

She cleared her throat and asked, “Am I here because of my grandmother?”

“Not exactly, but partially. You are here because of who you are and what you are.”

“I am here because I am a Jew?”

He started to laugh and then coughed. Vogel handed him a glass of water.

Machen

He finds a body at dusk
sleeping beneath a blanket
of snow.
He prods it with a steel toe
of a hobnailed boot
and demands a response
to a compound question
of being and doing.

Membrane

Lake freezing into a blue mirror
reflects me swimming.
The I in the dank drink
reaches for the revenant
shuffling on thin ice.

Chapter Thirty-Nine of Okeanus

A sibilant sound shattered his concentration. He turned and caught a glimpse of a slight figure silently moving in the shadows of the deck. He screwed his eyes into a squint to see. He was sure the shadow was not one of the sailors; it was too small and thin. Unconsciously his right hand wrapped around the bone handle of his curved dagger. His fear awakened a sense of the bear; his nostrils flared as the spirit of the baresark rose into his conscious mind.

The figure stopped, sensing his presence. The wind changed direction and he detected a faint musky perfume. He knew then it was the woman, the Xipponese diplomate, who walked in the deck’s shadows. He moved away from her, searching for a darker shadow in which to hide. He suspected his attempt to hide was futile, because he sensed she knew intuitively that a baresark lurked in the shadows.

She slowly approached him, granting him a few moments to relax. She stopped a few feet away from him, waiting in a beam of the moon’s light that was now spreading over the waters. Although the light was faint he could clearly see her thin figure, her pale white face, and her long black hair pulled back and elaborately braided in a thick cord that hung to her waist. She wore a dark purple robe and flat leather shoes. A silver pendant dangled around her neck; she wore two rings: a large silver ring on her left hand and a ruby ring on her right. She had a prominent nose, thin lips and heavy brows.

As she drew closer, he noted her teeth were white, strong and straight and her eyes pale blue, like cornflowers. Finally, he decided, somewhat subjectively, that although her expression was feral, she exuded an extreme intelligence.

“You are a Keltoi?”

He cleared his throat. “I don’t know that to be true, although the Keltoi accepted me as one of them. I suspect I am related to them, especially after the things I have experienced over the last few weeks.”

She took a step forward and reached out her hand to touch his cheek. Her fingers were long and well shaped. At first he pulled back but when she reached toward him a second time, he let her touch him.

“Where are you from?”

“I am a Frenchman. I live in Paris.”

“Where is this place?”

“The Keltoi called it middangeard.”

“Yes, I have heard stories of this place. There is an ancient poem-éala éarendel engla beorhtast / ofer middangeard monnum sended. However, I have never really believed it existed.”

“What does it mean?”

“Hail Earendel, brightest angel, above middle earth sent to men.”

“So you are from this mythic world, the home of Earendel?”

Her hand held his jaw and he suspected she used touch as a sort of lie detector.

“Yes, I am from middangeard.”

She stepped back and he let out a breath.

“How did you come here?”

“Through a portal opened by a witch.”

“A witch?”

“What witch?” Her voice rose.

“Her name is Jacqueline Le Tourneau.”

“Where does she live?”

“In France like me.” Now it was her turn to breathe a sigh of relief. He suspected she feared a witch from Okeanus, the watery realm, was opening portals to middangeard.

“Does anyone on board know what you are?”

“No.”

“Good. If they did they would throw you overboard. I sensed your presence from the start but you have been asleep and it was difficult to see you. I have a lot of questions but we have little time now. I have agreed to dine with the Captain and I will soon be summoned.”

“I have also been invited.”

“You must never reveal who or what you are.”

He noted for the first time some sympathy in her pale eyes.

“Of course.”

“What do they call you baresark?”

"The Captain knows me as the sellsword-Tatyx.”

“What is your real name?”

"Oiseau.”

“Oiseau, I am Sor Michaelsdottir. My friends called me Mikk. I am a diplomate for the Xipponese. Do you know what that means?”

"Not really.”

“It means power, power in all its forms, and it means magic.”

“What were you doing on the Island? I heard that the King hates witches.”

“The King desires power so he is forced to deal with the Xipponese. But he hates all forms of magic, which makes his intercourse with us particularly distasteful. Nevertheless, we supported him in his war against Brasilika because it was in our interest to do so but now that the war is over, the relations between our two countries is strained. I came to the Island to tr y and smooth the King’s ruffled feathers.”

“Did it work?”

“A little. He lost the war with Brasilika and decimated his mercenary army in the process. He is now weak and needs his allies more than ever. Although it offends him to admit it, he knows he needs us. Imagine Oiseau, being afraid of witches, dragons and daemons in our world. It is like being afraid of life itself.”

“You are right Sor Michaelsdottir. We do have many things to discuss because dragons are the reason I left middangeard.”

She cocked her head to the right and Oiseau knew he had her attention: however, at that moment, the botswain rang the time and Roby called for them.

The Prologue to Okeanus

I am editing my fantasy novel Okenaus. Here is the Prologue.


On October 31, La Toussaint, Benoit Kohlbert leaned against a brass street lamp on a corner of an intersection near the Bois de Boulogne, a large park in Paris. His shadow stretched across the street until it penetrated the boundaries of a dense wood.

He whispered, “I shouldn’t go. It’s not fair.”

He gazed into the woods with such longing, however, that a stranger stopped and asked if he needed help.


Benoit waved him away and as soon as the man turned the corner, he argued, “but it is really better for my wife if I do this. I need it and it calms my nerves and makes me a better husband.”


A figure emerged from the woods, a shadow really, an outline of a man or a woman.
Benoit gave a faint wave. The figure waved back and then lit a cigarette, which illuminated delicate olive features, long black hair, and a slight frame.

Benoit made up his mind. He straightened his jacket, looked both ways and then hurried across the street, dodging the nighttime traffic.


As he approached, the figure, dressed in a black dress and stiletto heels, reached out to take his hand. Benoit smiled because the prostitute, in honor of All Saints Eve, wore a Venetian mask of pink porcelain, leaving only eyes and full red lips exposed. The two turned away from the streetlights and entered the autumn woods like Hansel and Gretel.

Benoit had been here before and he knew the routine. They walked silently to a clearing deep within the park where the young man spoke for the first time, telling him the fee and asking what he wanted.


Benoit fished a wad of euros from his pocket and handed them to the prostitute, who sat down on a tuft of brown grass and multi-colored leaves to count the bills.


While waiting, Benoit heard two things, which distracted his attention. The first was a distance rumble of thunder from the north, somewhere over Sacre Coeur. Because of global warming, Paris was undergoing a drought and rain was a rare and unexpected event. Even though France desperately needed it, rain tonight, he thought, was a bad omen. The second thing, he heard, was a soft hollow thump coming from his right, just above the trees; the sound repeated regularly like a runner’s heart at rest.


The young prostitute, ignoring the sounds, reached for his hand to pull him down onto the grass, but Benoit, unnerved and distracted by the eery sounds of thunder and thumping, pushed the hand away and looked up through a break in the limbs of the trees, where a deeper, darker blue shadow separated from the rain filled clouds. The shadow hung in the air like a hummingbird, its great wings filling with air and then propelling downward with a mighty push that made the bothersome thump that had first caught his attention.


The shadowy creature descended, close enough for him to see its yellow eyes. Benoit deflected his gaze, hoping not to attract its attention. The beast sniffed and turned its wolf-like maw toward the prostitute, who was pulling the dress off to reveal a flat hairy stomach beneath a red padded bra. He still wore the mask.


Benoit, now no longer interested in the young Brasilian and his taut body, watched entranced, as drops of saliva fell from the beast’s fangs and ignited into yellow flames. With a moist cough, the beast, like a snake before a strike, recoiled. A heartbeat passed before yellowish flames spewed in a concerted thrust downward and engulfed the young man, melting his flesh in a private inferno, and burning a silhouette of the prostitute into the grass.


Benoit paralysed with fright, his nostrils blistered by the acrid smoke of the burning flesh, watched the beast recoil a second time. In awe he crossed himself and whispered: “Sweet Mary, holy Mother of God, a blue dragon.”

Okeanus

I have finished the first draft of my new novel Okeanus. Here is the synopsis.

Jacques Oiseau, a French psychologist, trained in Uppsala, Sweden, and a Capitaine of the Police Judiciare in Paris, profiles and tracks serial killers. Shortly after the death of his Swedish wife, Birgit, the Commissioner orders the grieving Oiseau to investigate a series of murders, involving arson and cannibalism.

Oiseau summons his team and throws himself into the investigation, which soon produces a witness. The witness warns Oiseau that he is not tracking a man but a Drac, a mythic creature from Celtic mythology.

With this bizarre information, Oiseau follows his leads and interviews witches, wizards, alchemists, and a beautiful representative of an ancient people called the Keltoi, the hidden ones.

The Keltoi directs Oiseau to an alchemist, who informs him that only a dragon hunter, who possesses and integrates a darkened soul shard, can rid the world of the Drac. The problem, he says, is that a darkened soul shard can only be obtained from a magus residing on one of the four elemental planes. Since, according to alchemical principles, the Drac comes from the watery plane, Okeanus, Oiseau must seek help from a magus there.

In exchange for a favor from the police, a witch creates a tear in the membrane separating the worlds and Oiseau falls, naked and unarmed, into an unbalanced watery world inhabited by a multitude of species, arising from or kin to dragons, and the humanoids that oppose them.

He does not speak the languages; he has no map or compass; and, once he arrives, Focalor, a denizen of the fiery plane, who knows of his quest and is determined to stop him, hunts him.

Vogel and the White Bull

Murder of Crow Books will be issuing a new edition of Vogel and the White Bull next year and I am currently working on the editor's changes and suggestions.

Below is another section concerning the function of images-one of the major themes of the book.

Elisa sipped on her beer.

“When I left Germany, I was working on a study of Heinrich’s head. It’s realistic, but with the usual tricks of Expressionism. For some reason now, I feel I could paint the same study with a new resonance. I think I understand a little more about the resonance of life. Before, I was painting what I saw physically; but now, I want to capture some of the mystery of what it is to be a Vogel or a Harding. I want to see beyond the skull into the psyche and beyond it to the spirit that animates the skull.”

“What does that mean?” asked Tracey. “I don’t get it.”

At that moment the waiter arrived with Vogel’s drink and Jonathan ordered another round for the table.

“It means, Tracey,” said Elisa, looking at her closely, “I’ve discovered something inside me that makes my vision of others numinous or mysterious. I’ve tapped into some new lode of energy that wants to get out through me and my art.”

“I still don’t get it,” reiterated Tracey sipping her margarita.

“We understand or are led by images. Sometimes the images are flat and inanimate. At other times, they are alive and electric, magical and mysterious, mystical or ineffable. Something out here in New Mexico has touched me and I have a sense of wonder I didn’t use to have. The other day, I met an Indian who told me a story and I could see the characters of the story. But I also felt there was something behind the story, the people were archetypes, expressing some greater meaning. I know these feelings emanate from me, but that doesn’t lessen the excitement or the beauty of the image. I also realize that certain images, because of cultural and personal reasons, are imbued with emotion or energy. I think I can reproduce those images in my art that will touch the observers in the same way.”

“Can you give me an example?” asked Jonathan who was very interested in Elisa and her new approach to her art.

Elisa thought for a moment and then said, “Suppose I paint a very realistic painting of a nude woman with a large snake across her body.”

“Well,” said Jonathan smiling, “it would be symbolic.”

“Yes,” she answered. “All of a sudden there would be all types of mythic, sexual, and religious associations from the image of the snake juxtaposed on to the nude woman.”

They were silent for a moment, thinking about the image, making their own associations, and painting their own picture in their imaginations.

A Cutting from Vogel and the White Bull-On Images

Looking at the painting across the room Elisa realized it was starting to come together. The multi-colored background that surrounded the man’s head looked like the patterns in the Persian rugs that lay on the floor of her mother’s home. It was odd how painting worked. She had started with a white canvas that she seasoned with a red wash. Then, she took a white crayon and drew the figure as precisely as she could. At this point, her painting looked realistic. She then began using white and black paints to define the subject’s physicality. From then on it was a matter of adding paint to create the emotional expressions she was trying to convey to the viewer. She did not call the images, but they came nonetheless, unbidden to the surface of her thought and found themselves upon the canvas. The images inhabited the four corners of the canvas, held in by the framing device. Sometimes one side was stronger than another. Imperceptibly, as she continued to work, the other side eventually grew in strength and a balance was maintained. It was through this process the images emerged and became plastic, more of a sculpture than a drawing. She loved the physicality of the work. The painting grew until a moment arrived when the work of art was complete. Sometimes, however, the work did not grow. Something went wrong and the creation took a wrong turn. At that moment, she would have to stop and scrape the paint from the canvas and begin again. It was usually a fault of consciousness. The error occurred usually at some moment when she began to think of the painting intellectually.

Raven-Noir

I am Traum
the raven of the tar pit.
I trapped
the blond lion.
I transfix him so long
in my avid attraction
that his yellow fur
falls and fades
into the sticky softness
of my flickering flesh.
His bones sink
into my somber soul
and settle like iron
shavings below. Someday
the pit will bubble
up a bone
or a fossilized feather.

Traum II

On Mars field at dusk
below the seven hills,
the trainer whistles
and a brace of twin retrievers
come, bounding
across dried winter grass,
their tongues lolling
from their black
and yellow snouts,
idiot’s evidence
of their subservience.
He throws a rubber ball
and they chase it.
First the yellows take it,
but the blacks roll them
onto their backs and steal
the red token.
They bite and growl,
tumble and gambol,
as the trainer scowls.
He whistles and snaps
his fingers in command.
They jump in obedience;
after all they are dogs.
This is not the end:
he carries a mixed pup
in his arms, while an assassin
waits on the Aventine.

Revenant V

Her blue veins
mark her parchment skin
like tattoo ink.
Her long fingers
press through tender grass,
stretching toward nests
of yellow straw.
The red hens brood
over brown eggs,
hidden on the border
of forest and field.
She hurries;
the fox and snake
arrive at dusk.
The hens flutter
as she lifts
them and spirits
away their eggs.
When the snake
appears, she calls
and he comes with hoe
and chops the copperhead
like cotton.
He hangs the skin
from the fence
as a warning
to the fox,
a premonition.

Revenant IV

Of all the ghostly emotions that haunt my house
his anger is the most tangible.
It hangs on the barn’s wall
like a coyote pelt skinned at dawn.
It barks at dusk and masquerades as order
and rules day’s dominance like a petty king.
Chaos lurks in the nails of its paws.
Chicken blood and feathers mask its snout.
It practices animal husbandry
to disguise its true intent.
Its silhouette in the summer’s stillness
harbingers the rant of winter’s tomorrow.

Traum

With his sinister hand, he drove the red Cadillac.
He smoked unfiltered camels with his right.
He named himself the Knight of Swords,
played Texas swing on the AM radio,
and lowered the black canvas top, like Jett Rink.

She warned him about the crocodiles.
They swarmed out of Africa and attacked the portcullis.
Imaginary damsels in distress were his weakness,
so he ordered steaks from Omaha and loaded
the red leather seats down with thawing boxes.

While the steaks rotted and turned an oily green
like a bottle fly’s eye, he pulled his Stetson
forward to avoid the wind.

Arriving at last, he honked
and she released the bridge’s German lock.
His Michelins squashed croc heads
as he entered the keep. She skipped
down gray stone stairs like a prom queen;
the poodle on her skirt emblematically black,
her hair bouncing jauntily in a pony tail.

She slide into the front seat,
flashing smooth legs and white panties,
scooting up against his denim thigh,
as the crocs boiled from the moat.

Driven mad by the smell of rotting meat
and exhaust, they scuttled on clattering claws
after the car until they hit asphalt on Route 66.

A note on Ihn Ritt die Nacht by Paul Celan

There is an image in Paul Celan’s Ihn ritt die nacht, which resonates with depth and meaning. For me, the image of the orange in the third stanza exemplifies the concept of the primordial word, which energizes and mythologizes poetry.

Here is the original with my translation.

Ihn ritt die Nacht

The night rode him, he came to himself,
the orphan’s overall was the flag,

no more detours
it rode him straight-

It is, it is, as if the oranges stood in the hedge,
as if, so ridden, he wore nothing
but his
first
birth-marked
secret-speckled
skin.




Ihr ritt die Nacht, er war zu sich gekommen,
der Waisenkittel war die Fahn,

kein Irrlauf mehr,
es ritt ihn grad

Es ist, es ist, als stünden in Liguster die Orangen,
als hätt der so Gerittene nichts an
als seine
erste
muttermalige, ge
heimnisgesprenkelte
Haut.


What comes first the primordial word or image?

When I first read this poem, I immediately focused on the orange, standing in the hedge, shining like a beacon in green, cool darkness. The orange does not hang; it stands. Although it stands boldly within the boundary of the hedge, it glows like a full moon on a dark night. It is hidden and yet it shines.

The orange is an anomaly, which functions as a beacon, calling us, filling our mind and imagination with its vibrancy, its color. From this initial attraction, our imagination moves to the other senses to create a sense of weight and depth. We touch the rough peel of the orange, we smell its citrus aroma, we taste its tart sweetness, we chew its thick pulp, and we suck the slick pips that slide around our tongue. Our mouths water as our eyes linger on the glowing orange, which stands like a prisoner within the hedge.

The Trap

He lays the trap
on gray green moss.
He pries the sharpened claws
open until he hears the click
of the German lock.
He places raw meat
onto the silver spring.
He hides in an orange bush
and waits for her to approach.
He smells the Valencia oranges ripen.
He feels the earth tumble and turn.
He sees the dappled green mint leaf
reflect the last ray of a weakened sun.
As he sleeps, the moon waxes and wanes.
He swells and bursts like a peach
fallen onto wet autumn clay.

Revenant III

The sole meal
we prepared
in five years
was boiled lobster,
which was apropos,
because our thing
was to lie on sugary sand
until her hair bleached white
and my native blood boiled
through my veneer.
We cooked the clay
until it glistened
and hardened,
then I extended my claw,
inviting her to crack
it with a steel vise.

Quelle II

The Valencia orange hangs
on Celan’s line,
swelling
his syntax
into its own myth
until it falls,
sweetly
onto wet clay,
which whirls
on wheels,
descending
to an emotion.

Quelle

Silence
and sentence,
twin snakes,
enwrapped
and ensorcelled
by Jacobs’ staff.

Quicksilver

We grind cinnabar
and sparks
scatter from the lathe.
We slit the snakeskin
and lubricate the dragon scales,
their bright moistness
harbingers
a spring space
of late containment.

Lichtung II

The primordial word
springs from a stone well,
dug by a grandfather
with an iron shovel,
seeking syntax.
It bubbles forth myth
and flirts with thought’s force,
which could be order
or fascistic desire.
Unlike Leni’s portraits
of youth’s beauty
or some metaphysician’s
game of goose stepping
rhyme and metronomic feet,
the sentence
must find
its own meadow
or clearing
within the black forest.

Visita

I was born
under the sign of the Lion
and by all reports
I should have followed the Sun King
but on the cusp
I slipped from the curb
and twisted through my fall
into the crow caverns
of the Moon Queen.
I lay in her sweet arms
for a decade,
listening to the foot pad
of the blue dragon,
fearing what I would become.
When a child
I sat with my father
in an old theater
on the square
and cheered Errol Flynn,
the greatest puer,
charge down Red Mountain.
As a man,
I channel the Hunger Artist
and intuit-
Kavka means jackdaw.

Couple

After chaos expelled them,
she contained him,
absorbing his anxiety,
madness and aloneness.
He reciprocated
by constructing a home
in a cave,
carrying a sharpen spear,
its tip hardened
in stolen fire,
and hunting black bison.
In the age of order,
they stand alone,
uncontained,
twitching
from a palsy
of self involvement
and modernity.

Electronic Age

Before connectivity
he secured
his yellow claws
in the center
of the ice.
Now,
the floe
melts
and the seals
disappear.
To be alone
in frigid silence
was paradise.

Verwandlung

In the center
he smeared
his body
with black mud
to protect
against flies
and the sun.
He floated
neither up
nor down
in the slough,
praying for metamorphosis.

Foucault's Pendulum

The rule of one
breaks many.
Chaos mourns the alone,
as its priests plot
against Akhenaten
the hermaphrodite.
The one
now dead
becomes many
until he slithers
from the silence,
stuttering
sibilant sounds
to his staff.

Austria 1782

With a black line,
sharp as a Cossack’s sword,
the bureaucrat
scratched him
from the Levant.
A raven
pecked
his brown eyes
in a dream,
birthing
Raben,
his second self.

55

Journeying north
he turns right.
The mystery
yields left
toward resistance.
The gauche
usurped
steal a march
through the strait
gate.