A Dream and an Imagined Conversation

Paul didn’t sleep well; he had had a dream that disturbed him. In fact, this was the first dream he had ever had of a talking animal. He had heard of such dreams before but he had never experienced one, although once he had dreamed of a wolf that walked up-right like a man. But the wolf never spoke to him; the horse last night spoke.

Although the dream frightened him; in some sense, he was proud of himself and embraced the dream as a breakthrough. He had studied the surrealists for many years and even tried to imitate them but he had never really achieved anything remotely surrealistic. His work was very cerebral but this dream, this dream about a talking horse, was something worthy of Buñuel or Dalí and he wondered if something within his unconscious mind was revealing itself. But if that were true, then what did a talking horse mean?

He knew the first question Günter would ask when he told him about the dream:"what did the horse say?" And here was the odd thing; he could not remember. He knew the horse spoke to him and that its voice was soothing and articulate but he could not for the life of him remember one word the animal said.

“Then tell me about the dream” will be Günter’s response to my inability to remember.

Here, too, I am a bit confused because although the dream is vague and the images banal I was infected with a sense of the noumenal. At first, I am walking on a street, leading the horse; and, then, inexplicably, the horse is down and sick. I am comforting it, whispering kind words to the beast, and brushing its coat. The horse is leaning into the brush seemingly enjoying the attention and I am brushing and talking. Suddenly, the horse lifts its head and turns to me and begins to talk. I am shocked and fall back. That is it; that’s the dream.

“Not much of a dream” Günter will say. “But it is not the images that are important,” I will respond; “it is the emotion. I was upset when the horse lay down; I was happy to care for the horse; I took pride in its rich black coat; and I was startled and afraid when it talked.”

“Ah,” Günter will say. “The best poetry and literature is where the author tries to convey an emotion. The most successful literature is where that emotion is conveyed. So an emotion or emotions were conveyed but I don’t think that was the purpose of the dream.”

I will scratch my head but I suspect Günter is right. The revelation is one of communication. However, the result is repression. For some reason I do not want to hear the unconscious speak or to understand that thing that the horse represents. Remember Günter will say “that which interferes with the work is repression.”

"So what am I to do," I will ask and Günter will answer as he always does. "Ask the horse to repeat himself. Call him back and talk to him. That is what Jung did and what you should do." He will pause and puff on his pipe and say, "I predict this horse will appear in your poems and prose until you know what he wants. Remember there is a wolf in every novel you ever wrote and there are bears in John Irving's work and toads, dogs, and snails in mine."

"Yes," I will say, as I imagine the horse and our next conversation.

Okeanus

I have just attached a link to the latest version of my fantasy novel "Okeanus." Check it out below.

Myth of Capital

the earth
twins itself
into him

he splits
into him
and her

brother and father
sister and mother

in an inscripted
garden
they spring two
then four
then sixteen

twinning ad infinitum

each marked
by tribal tattoos

multiplying
until the schizoid
is born
as alone
as a painted egg

a castaway
in its solitude

sterile and clone-able

it consumes virtually

Ego on the Cusp of Dark

with a compass
point
she perforates
a perfect plane

with pencil
she circumscribes
a circumference
and strikes
a spark

that illuminates
the circle

darkness without
brightness within

she builds
a fire
out of myth
and fable
fantasy and faith

until flames
consume
and ashes cool

Drowning in Lethe 1535

purple and violet waves
swallow a single sailor

who silently sinks
to the shelter of the shell

far beneath the surging surf
sharks and rays
circle

the unconscious
the unnamed
the unremembered

until the flaccid
egg splits
and its albuminous
softness
whitens
and swirls
into the spread
of sea spray

that rains
upon the shadowed
shore
of New Spain

Haiku Drei

from frail fantasy
her rough rope of perfumed hair
moistens sunny skin

Mask contra Mask

the body
without organs
wears its masks
like the egg
at Easter
displays
its paint

mask
to mask
the symbolic
converses

but who among us
can explain a symbol
or explicate
a text

so in the end
our calculating
calculus

is

mask contra mask
equals
misunderstandings

sizzling
over satin skies

and smelling
of ozone
and orange

Sea-Snails on a Black Chow's Tongue

My second collection of poetry, "Sea-Snails on a Black Chow's Tongue," just received editor's choice at iuniverse. It joins "Vogel and the White Bull" and "Petroglyphs" as an editor's choice recipient. The book should be available around Christmas time.

Fat Men Texting

busy fat men
texting
dollars
and sense

what would
happen
if your myths
melted
away like dew

no Hamlet
no Oedipus
Zeus or Wotan

no cross
no burning
bush

would your fat
fall
away
and leave
bones for lions
to gnaw
on the yellow veldt

and what
of the little boy
would he play
beneath the stairs
and dance
on hardwood floors

on a summer's day

Easter Dying Eggs

the body with no organs

like an egg
at Easter

without dye

then mother
arrives
and boils
a full dozen

that we paint
with green
and yellow
pink and blue

we hide them
in tall grasses
with snails
and wild rabbits

until found
they live
untamed lives

without ideas

Language Logistics

Like Luther
we learn
to speak

unmediated
to ourselves
and to gods

through logos

our producing
unconscious

invents feathered
tongues

like bright berries
on burning bushes

in the snail's

garden

The Anxiety of Angst

To protect
ourselves
we cross
our fingers
and cross
our heart

we say
a hail Mary
we cover
our head
with the pillow

we turn
on a light
or knock
on wood

it is all a net
to break our fall
or a shield
to deflect the blow

magic feathers
chicken bones
goat's blood

prayers
savings account
medicare

REAL : Regarding Arts & Letters

Dr. Butterworth-McDermott notified me last night that Stephen F. Austin State University's prestigious journal--REAL : Regarding Arts & Letters--has accepted two of my poems--"Quebec 1608" and "August 13, 1961"--for publication.

I wrote these two poems while on a hiking trip on Vancouver Island this summer and they mark a Swinburnian/Heidegger-like shift in my poetic consciousness.

Thank you, Dr. Butterworth-McDermott.

Editor's Choice for "Cave Gossip"

I was just notified that I have received the editor's choice designation at iuniverse for the third time for my novel, "Cave Gossip." I want to thank my editors at iuniverse and especially George Nedeff for their invaluable help in producing the books.

Moxyland by Lauren Beukes

While reading "Moxyland," Lauren Beukes' dystopian fantasy, published by Angry Robot, I kept asking myself, where are the "parents," the serious people who will take charge and protect these four dysfunctional children; and, therein, I think, lies the rub or at least the theme of the work. The four protagonists, who tell the story in alternating first person segments, are children without supervision in the literal and figurative sense; they are orphans, cut off, without father and mother.

Oh, don't misunderstand me, they have supervision all right, in spades, dealt to them electronically by some disembodied corporation that employs them as consumer fodder; however, in truth they are castaways in a world where the "virtual" and the "real" have converged and melded. They are children, like those of Golding's "Lord of the Flies," left to their own devices or the vagaries of fate within a virtual universe controlled by an unseen hand.

In thinking about the book over the last week, I have concluded that "Moxyland" can be read as a prequel to "Brave New World" or "1984." High praise indeed, I whisper, and yet I think the work deserves it. In that regard, I would not place the book in the science fiction section of my local Borders; instead, I would set it near Huxley and Orwell or maybe next to Sartre's "Nausea" or Camus' "The Plague."

Are you crazy, you might ask. Have you lost your mind? I don't think so but if you insist it is science fiction, then I must conclude that the book is really a book of ideas like John Brunner's "Stand on Zanzibar" or Harry Harrison's "Make Room Make Room." Nevertheless, even here I have trouble, because Beukes' book is more grounded in the here and now and consequently does not amaze as much as Brunner and Harrison; but, instead, warns and points at a near future, almost on our doorstep, that we should take heed of (even though we might be helpless to stop it).

In a nutshell, "Moxyland" involves four protagonists, who tell their stories in the first person. They live in Capetown, South Africa, approximately ten years from today; and, although apartheid is not mentioned, its effects seem obvious.

The protagonists are: Kendra, a young photographer; Tendeka, an activist and would-be terrorist; Lerato, a corporate employee and computer programmer; and Toby, a rich kid, working on his master degree in literature at the local University. Each one is connected to the virtual world and tangentially to each other. However, each one is disconnected from family and friends. Instead, they inhabit the virtual universe, where avatars could hide a fourteen year old or a corporate boss.

As I said above, they are orphans in both literal and literary sense. For instance, Toby's mother cuts off his stipend and he is forced to make money as a "gonzo" reporter; Lerato is an aids baby, raised in an orphanage as a ward of a multi-national corporation.

Beukes sets the four off on a collision course, which ends in disaster for some of the participants.

One of the most telling images in the book is a self-portrait done by Kendra. It is a photograph of herself. Because she uses old, analog equipment and antiquated film stock, the image is black--not blank, black. An interesting image, especially, when the author tells the story in the first person. Here the "cogito" fails; the "I" of the persona refuses to reflect the vision of the constructed other. In other words, no images come to the viewer to instruct or inform the viewer. Isn't that a bit like the avatar of the other in a computer game?

In that regard, another major theme of the novel is the way that the virtual is bleeding into the real. Toby plays various games in which, through his first-person-narration we are not sure if he is in a game or in life. The reader has difficulty determining what is real and what is not and eventually so does Toby.

As the virtual seeps in and absorbs the real, human beings become consuming fodder and living advertisements for certain global products. Within this context, the orphan, un-weaned from the real mother, continues to imbibe the corporate milk, which results in addiction and infantilism.

As I said at the beginning I think "Moxyland" can be read as a prequel to "1984" or "Brave New World." If we project the story line into the future and I think the book invites it; either, a fascistic Big Brother will arise, probably a virtual one, like the Wizard of Oz, or an unseen manipulative hand will continue to control and manipulate as in the Huxley novel.

In conclusion, the novel is a book of ideas; well written, edgy, and prescient.

C v.N

snuggled
in shell
the snail
sees not

gardener
grasps
gray
relics
of cracked
shell
and knows
not

silver slime
shines
with sun
and tells
tales

to us
who think
not

Daybreak

the nesting
doll

began
as a seed

that fell
into a seam

and grew
so rational

that its unreasonable
origin now seems

a gnostic dream.

Defensible Knowledge

what god
worships you

does it shield you
from the darkness

does it evolve
and grow

what language
does it utter

when the wind
rustles the needles

of the ponderosa

Knowledgeable Defense

what shield
shields
you
from darkness

dare you
drop it

and call
the creatures
from
that corpse

of nothingness

that enwraps you

Core

we descend
father and son
to the center

our iron picks
sparking rock
as we strike
red rock

redness
reddens
our blushing
cheeks

flames
flare

and we
are one

at last

Infinite Bees

what do
I do
when doing
does
nothing

note
nothing
today
produces
no honey
tomorrow

but

you say

one bee
working
finitely
finishes
an infinite
honey

drop

Chapter One- Cave Gossip

Karl met Hélène in a café on a Saturday afternoon.

He had been visiting bookstores in and around the Sorbonne and in the mid-afternoon he stopped at a café on the Boulevard St. Germain. He ordered a glass of pinot noir and slowly sipped it, while perusing the books he had purchased: Ernst Jünger’s journal written during the Second World War and the Germans’ occupation of Paris and Georg Heinrich Löwe’s strange book about his imprisonment in a POW camp in Stalin’s Russia. Germans who were also Francophiles fascinated Wisent and the mysterious Löwe, whom he had known most of his life, still had the ability to mystify and entertain him.

These books emphasized a period of history that he, as a German and as a European, wasn’t particularly proud of. Many times when he was walking on the streets of the Left Bank, visiting bookstores or attending films, he would imagine those same streets fifty years before. In 1992, he was thirty-two years old and his mother was fifty-five. She was born in 1937 and was five years old in 1942. In 1942, his grandfather, the man with whom he lived after his father left his mother when he was twelve, was fighting in Russia. In 1992, most of these people still lived. Yet, the events of fifty years ago seemed mythical and ancient to him. As he poured over these books, trying to understand the mind of the generation that had preceded him, he realized he didn’t feel free to sit down with his grandfather and ask him to explain why Germany went to war against Europe and why he had felt the need and duty to go to war. Wisent assumed his grandfather would respond with some short canned answer about his duty as a German citizen. But Wisent agreed with Sartre. There are no accidents. A man who takes up arms and goes to war goes because he has made a decision to go to war. Therefore, the war was his grandfather’s war as much as it was Hitler’s. Jünger and Löwe, too, decided to make the war against France their war no matter how they may later view or try to describe it in their journals.

He noticed Hélène as she approached the café. It was approximately 5:30 p.m. and he had just ordered a second glass of wine. Her walk was what attracted him. It was not a natural walk; instead, it was a stylized movement, like an elaborate dance step. He knew she was aware of what she was doing. Her hair was thick, a rich golden-brown, like honey, cut short on the sides and back, but curly and thick on the top. Like a shaved poodle, thought Wisent, realizing this was not flattering but also suspecting she had chosen the cut, like the walk, for the effect it would produce.

Her eyes were blue, her facial features small and delicate, and her skin clear and translucent like so many French women who spend hours on their complexion. She was tall and slim with narrow hips, small breasts the size of his fist, and slender legs. On that day, she wore a pale silk dress, no hose and flat shoes. Her only jewelry was a pair of silver earrings molded in the form of an Egyptian scarab or dung beetle.

She sat at the table next to him, choosing a seat facing him, rather than taking the other, which would have turned her back to him. Wisent screwed up enough courage to look at her again, but, to his surprise and chagrin, she turned away. He thought she was planning to move on because he noticed she had drained her glass of Coca Cola and was now bent forward, fishing in her purse, in a movement that obviously signaled her preparation for escape. However, instead of retreating from the field, she pulled out a lipstick and compact and slowly and sensually applied the lipstick on her large lower lip before turning toward him. He was transfixed watching the simple gesture. When she turned, he said, “May I join you in a drink?”

She finished her lips and put her lipstick and compact away and said, “Oui.”

He moved to her table and shook her hand.

“Je m’appele Karl.”

“Hélène.”

Prologue to "Cave Gossip"

The sun settled on the ridge of the western mountains, casting a red sheen across the manicured yard of the sixteenth century chateau, located near Avignon in the south of France.

Karl Wisent, a young German, lying on a chaise longue facing the pool, moved his finger slowly over the Greek text of Plutarch’s Life of Alexander and whispered each word out loud, as a woman in her mid-thirties with long black hair braided down her slim back emerged from the house. She wore a white one-piece bathing suit and carried a large red towel draped over her right shoulder.

As she passed the reading boy, she ran her long tanned fingers through his thick auburn hair and whispered: “Quit reading and take a swim. You need some exercise, mon petit.”

The boy looked up, his eyes glassy from reading, and answered: “Mutter, did you know that Alexander’s mother worshipped the god Dionysius and that Alexander was the son of a god?”

She laughed, dropped her towel onto another red-wood chaise longue, stood on her tip-toes, pulled at the bottom of her suit and, then, dived head-first into the pool. Water splashed the stones of the patio and the boy jumped up to protect his book. “Mutter, bitte,” he squealed ineffectually.

She swam to the edge of the pool and laughed. “You and your books,” she said with a pout. She sank beneath the surface and then emerged in a rush before continuing: “Karl, put the book away and come in for a swim. Your grandmother is expecting quite a crowd tonight so we need to swim and change for dinner.”

He reluctantly trudged to a table near the kitchen door, put his book down, pulled off his shirt and kicked off his sandals, and ran to the edge of the pool. He hesitated for a split moment and then dived in next to his mother, splashing her with water. She fell back startled and then growled playfully and ducked his head beneath the surface.

Later, at dinner, Karl sat between Max Simon, a writer from Munich and close friend of his grandmother, and Laetitia Le Brayon, a painter from Arles. He raised his sun-burned shoulders as he struggled to cut up the roasted chicken on his plate. He preferred to tear the meat from the bones with his hands but he knew both his mother and grandmother would not approve so he continued to hack away at the dry meat with his knife.

Max Simon held his wine glass in both hands and leaned forward and asked Laetitia: “So when does the great Löwe arrive?” She swallowed and answered: “Martine said he was expected for dinner but of course he is not here.”

Karl said with a mouth full of chicken: “I read his book on South American butterflies.”

Laetitia answered, “ah bon?” Karl looked up to see her eyes sparkling at him and he knew she was making fun of him in some way so he concentrated on his chicken and tried to make himself invisible. She, however, decided to pull him back into the conversation and asked: “So how old are you?”

“Twelve,” he mumbled with his mouth full.

She sipped her wine and formed another question: “Where do you go to school?”

He swallowed and blushed. “I attend the Waldorf School in Berlin.”

“Waldorf,” she asked with a pout, “like the salad?”

He grimaced and answered: “No, like Rudolf Steiner. He created the schools. You do know who Rudolf Steiner is, don’t you?”

She shrugged and took another sip of her wine.

“He wrote a book on bees. You should read it.”

Max Simon nudged her and she turned back toward the man. Karl sighed with relief and stared down at his chicken.

After dinner the guests scattered around the lawn and the pool, drinking pernod on ice and chatting. Karl was the only child at the dinner and he wandered listlessly about the yard, listening to the conversations, until he decided to go upstairs to the library and read.

He entered the chateau through the kitchen door. In the hot kitchen several local ladies washed dishes, while one woman sliced up various fruit tarts for dessert. They called out to him and he waved, as he hurried through to the hall to the back stairs. Just outside the kitchen, a tall middle-aged man, wearing white slacks and a white tennis shirt, sat on the wooden steps and sipped a cognac.

“Hello,” he said in French, as he moved to the side to let Karl pass.

“Hello,” Karl replied as he climbed the stairs.

“Where are you off to?” the man asked and Karl stopped, cleared his throat, and answered: “To the library to read.”

“There’s a library up there?” he asked, standing and turning toward Karl.
“It’s my grandfather’s,” replied Karl.

The man started up the stairs, saying in a bright voice: “I love libraries.”
As they climbed, the man said: “I am Georg and you must be Karl.”

Karl nodded and stepped onto the landing in front of the library door. “So what are you reading,” asked the man and Karl curtly answered: “Life of Alexander, by Plutarch.”

“Excellent book,” said the man, pushing past Karl into the room. “It’s full of lies.”

The man walked to the center of the room and surveyed the shelves of leather bound books. “Magnificent,” he said. “Look at the ceiling. They don’t do work like this anymore.“ Karl looked up at the ceiling. He had spent every summer of his life in the Chateau but he rarely glanced at the images painted there.

“You know the story don’t you?”

Karl shook his head to indicate he wasn’t sure.

“It’s the myth of Diana the huntress and her admirer Actaeon. See there is Actaeon in the bushes spying on the bathing Diana, Diana the huntress.”

Karl stared at the painting and decided to look up the myth. The man threw himself in a leather chair near the open window. The fading sun illuminated his white blond hair and sharp features.

Not knowing what to say about the ceiling painting, Karl walked to the window and looked down on the garden and the people scattered around the grounds. Moths fluttered around the lamps as people paired off and disappeared into the creeping twilight.

The man stood up and joined him at the window. “Dusk is my favorite time of the day,” he said.

Karl spied his mother, holding hands with a French poet by the name of Jean-Luc Garrel, near a hedge north of the pool. She stopped and lifted her face for the poet to kiss. Georg said: “That’s your mother with Garrel, isn’t it?”

Karl felt embarrassed and angry. He said: “Salope.”

The man sipped his cognac and then dropped into one of the leather chairs near the window. “Why don’t you sit down, Karl? We can read or talk if you like?”

The boy glared at the man and then fell onto a leather love seat. Lowe pushed his thick blond hair off his forehead and said; “Let me tell you a story about a ghost I saw when I was a child.”

With the word, “ghost,” Karl felt his scalp tingling and asked: “Who are you, really?”

The man leaned forward, holding his cognac snifter in two hands, and said: “Georg Löwe.”

“The writer?” the boy asked.

The man nodded and then leaned back in the chair. “Do you want to hear the story or not?”

The boy nodded and the man looked up at the ceiling, cleared his throat, and said: “Where to start? Ah, I know.” He looked over at Karl and winked and then spoke in a flat monotone. Karl closed his eyes, stretched out on the love seat, and relaxed.
The man leaned back in his chair and smiled. Cicadas buzzed in the bushes and a woman laughed in the distance. The man scratched his left ear and began his story: “Some time prior to my birth, my mother and my paternal grandmother became devoted to one another. It was an unexpected alliance; nevertheless, my grandmother loved my mother as she would a daughter and the two became fast friends. We spent a great deal of time at my grandparents’ home in Freiburg, especially when my father was away on one of his trips, which seemed to me to be most of the time. My mother was very lonely and my grandmother’s affection was welcomed by both of us.

“My earliest memories involve attending the church where my grandfather was pastor. We would sit in the family pew and listen to my grandfather preach his sermons. I usually sat between my grandmother and my mother and draw, although they didn’t like me to. Eventually, around the age of five or six, they refused to let me entertain myself by drawing my pictures and made me sit up straight and listen. Instead of listening, of course, I daydreamed and created all types of fantastical worlds during those hours in the church.

“In addition to being very religious, my grandmother was also superstitious. She believed in the power of magic and she possessed all types of amulets that she either wore or carried to protect her from evil spirits and, even though she believed the world was populated with demons, she had a pleasant personality and good sense of humor. She also believed the dead were still with us and that it was possible to communicate with the spirit world. Sometimes when my father was away on business, my grandmother would organize a séance at our house. She and a close friend, Frau di Muralto, would organize an evening devoted to card and palm readings and a séance. My mother was particularly impressed by these evenings and she was a believer in the cards. I remember that Frau di Muralto had a beautiful deck of medieval Tarot cards and she would take a place in the corner of the drawing room and shuffle her deck over and over again. There were usually six to eight ladies at my mother’s dinners when my father was away and, because my mother and grandmother were easy going, they usually allowed the two domestic workers of the house, Frau Miller and Signorita Josephina, to stand at the edge of the room and listen to Frau di Muralto read the cards. Once I was old enough to know what was going on, I usually tried to find a place to hide in the room, usually behind the couch near the fireplace. It was a safe and warm spot to hide and I could see most of the ladies who were sipping tea or coffee and listening intently to Frau di Muralto as she discussed the meaning of the cards.”

The man paused and sipped his cognac and Karl opened his right eye, like a crocodile, to see why the man had stopped. As the man resumed his story, Karl closed his eye.

“Frau di Muralto, on one of her visits, called to me to come and sit next to her while she was shuffling the cards. I approached her carefully because I was somewhat frightened of her. I felt she could see not only into my soul but also into my future. I was not the most obedient boy. I always had some scam or trick in operation, usually in an attempt to scare up a few small coins to buy candy or toy soldiers, which I was addicted to at the time. As I drew closer to her, I smelled an odd odor. I later learned it was menthol, a smell that emanated from an ointment she used to soothe her aching joints and muscles.

“At the time, I was probably five or six and Frau di Muralto was in her forties. She had dark black hair, black eyes, and an ample bosom. I remember that because she was always pulling me toward her and pressing my face against her chest.

“My grandmother told me that Frau di Muralto was from Venezia and I could tell from her odd manner of speaking that she spoke differently than us. Some people accused her of speaking ‘bird German’ or a strange Swiss dialect that we did not understand, but I have come to believe she spoke German with a Venetian accent and that her love of the occult arts sprang from her heritage. I believe our cultural heritage lives on in us and Frau di Muralto had a touch of the oriental about her and the magic of Venice.

“Anyway, she turned the card over and showed me a multi-colored medieval illustration, to which I was immediately attracted. I had never seen anything like those cards, and I cannot express the numinous feeling I felt as I gazed upon the major arcana. Each card seemed to spring some lever in my mind, opening up all types of associations and producing new and intriguing images. I felt the cards were sacred and they were speaking to me, calling me to read them, to handle them in a reverent, almost sensual fashion.”

Without opening his eyes, Karl asked in a soft whisper: “What does numinous mean?”

“Ah,” said Lowe, “it means something that creates in you a feeling of the spiritual. Do you understand?”

“Not really,” said Karl, opening his eyes.

“Have you ever stood on a mountain top and watched the sun rise or listened to Bach and felt a tingling in the roots of your hair?”

“I felt that once at Christmas Mass in Berlin.”

“That’s it. That is a numinous feeling.”

The boy stretched out and closed his eyes, while the man sipped his cognac. They let the silence of the room settle upon them before the man continued. Finally, Löwe resumed his story.

“Later, after dinner, and after I was put to bed by Signorita Josephina, I returned to the drawing room, entering silently through a side door, to take my usual place behind the couch next to the fire. The ladies did not notice me because they had all taken seats at the large round table in the center of the room.

“As Frau Miller turned the gas lamps down and Frau di Muralto prepared herself for the séance, I noticed the housemaids slipping into the room. Counting me, there were twelve women there.

“With the lights down low, the six women at the round table joined hands and the room became very quiet as Frau di Muralto closed her eyes and rocked gently back and forth. Soon the only sound I could hear was the whoosh of the oil-burning lamps, the tick of the great clock, and errant sounds from the coal burning in the grate.

“It was so calm in the room that I almost fell asleep. In fact, I think that I did begin to doze off, when suddenly, I heard a sound like a crack of wood; it was the sound trees make in the winter when they expand from the cold and break.”

The man paused and Karl opened his eyes. Once the man saw he had the boy’s attention he continued.

“Frau di Muralto asked in a low voice, ‘Is there anyone there?’ There was no answer, but suddenly, I felt the warmth draining out of the room. Where it had been cozy and snug a few minutes before, it was now becoming frigid.

“I could see the cold beginning to affect everyone in the room, including the working women of the house who had bunched together to keep warm and who crossed their arms. Fraulein Wise who was quite thin seemed to be especially suffering from the cold and I imagined or heard her teeth chattering.

“The temperature continued to drop and I noticed my breath as I exhaled. My nose felt icy.

“Frau di Muralto said in a louder voice, ‘I know you’re there. Announce yourself.’ With that pronouncement a plaster bust of a Napoleonic general fell from the bookshelf and shattered on the parquet floor and all of the women jumped, whereupon Frau di Muralto told them to calm down because the spirit would not hurt them. It was then I saw the creature; it was not a man, but a man-like creature, a cross between a monkey and man, and it was sitting on the bookcase, high above the women looking down upon them with a curious expression on its face. The creature had long arms, a leathery, hairless tail and the face of a monkey. It was studying the women in a way I interpreted as curiosity. Every time Frau di Muralto called out, it would turn its simian head toward her, but it was obvious that the creature did not understand her or that she saw him. Eventually, the creature became aware of my stare and it slid down the bookcase, crawling across the floor toward me. As it approached I smelled an acidic odor and I began to shiver just as Fraulein Wise was shivering. He seemed to be fascinated by my awareness of him and like a great cat stalking his prey, he lowered his body as he crawled toward me.”

Karl sat up and opened his eyes.

The man now addressed him and lifted his voice. “I wanted to cry out for help, but I seemed unable to speak, then Frau di Muralto shouted in a voice not her own, ‘Leave him! Leave him now!’ The creature, as if on cue, turned his head to look over his shoulder at Frau di Muralto, and in one bound, jumped first to the bookcase and then through the wall. As he disappeared, another apparition appeared, a woman dressed in a long, white dress that left her fair arms and breasts exposed. Her long hair was pulled up upon her head and held in place by an arrangement of small white flowers. She walked about the room examining each one of the women and stopped at my mother where she bent forward and kissed her upon the lips. As they kissed, I heard my mother emit a low moan and I noted as the woman lifted her head that there was a gentle smile upon her face. I could not take my eyes off of her. As she turned toward me and smiled, I recognized her as the woman with the red lion on the Tarot card called Strength.

Karl’s eyes widened and he took in a deep breath.

“As she stood next to the table, a cloud of mist began to fill the room seeping in from underneath the doors, raising the temperature, turning the frigid air damp. Suddenly, a great bird flew from the wall, a white owl, which landed upon the woman’s arm, as the mist continued to flow into the drawing room obscuring my view of the woman.

“Frau di Muralto called out, ‘She is gone, but another comes. Wait! Wait!’ She paused and then cried out in a man’s voice: ‘I am here.’

“From the mists, a man wearing long robes stepped into the room. He had long blond hair and tattoos on his face. He carried a tall staff and his robes were multi-colored. A white pony followed him and the two stood next to the table. I thought I heard the sound of pipes in the distance.

“Frau di Muralto asked, ‘Do you see him? He says he comes to see his descendants, to touch their heads and to bless them. Do you see him and his pony? He is here.’

“No one answered, but the sound of the pipes grew louder and I felt a great tingling sensation at the top of my head and I felt my body shivering uncontrollably. My mother began to cry and, then, she spoke in a strange language, a guttural sound, and fell forward onto the table. I, too, seemed to pass out for a moment and when I awoke, the lights were on and the women were talking and bustling about the room. They had moved my mother to my father’s leather chair and someone had poured a small glass of cognac for her.

“Once I recovered, I crawled from my hiding place and slipped through the side door, escaping to my room, where I hid under the covers.”

“How old were you when this happened?” asked Karl.

“Maybe eight or nine.”

“Did you ever talk about what you saw with anyone?”

“Yes. I talked with Frau di Muralto. I thought she would understand.”

“Did she understand?”

“I told her about the images or visions that I had and that I thought the woman was from the Tarot. She showed me Number 8, the card of Strength and we talked about the meaning of the card.”

“Did anyone else see the spirits?”

“Not that I know. Frau di Muralto felt them and she channeled their voices, but she did not see them.”

“Has it happened again?”

“Not in the same way. Instead, what happens is I have a thought or a vision while writing or meditating and, then, later, I discover evidence that what I saw or felt really happened.”

Karl leaned back and looked at the window. He was replaying the story in his head.

The man stood up suddenly, yawned, and stretched: “It was nice meeting you Karl and I hope you, too, see a ghost or at least a monkey. I need to speak to your grandmother before I leave.”

After the man disappeared down the stairs, the boy sat quietly and listened to the sounds of the guests in the garden. He had forgotten about his mother and Garrel and, instead, imagined the room filled with ghosts.

A bat fluttered outside of the window as the moon rose and illuminated the garden with yellow light. Karl yawned and snuggled into the soft leather chair. Just as he felt himself falling asleep he remembered his mother’s hand in Garrel’s and a cuckoo sounded in the woods.

Writer's League of Texas, Rick Klaw, Monkeybrain Books, Texas Writers, and Austin

A week or so ago I attended the Writer's League of Texas Agents Conference in Austin. I have been a member of the League for many years but I live in Dallas, so I very rarely show up at their meetings. I am not sure why I am a member; I guess I just like to say I am a Texas writer.

I grew up in Texas and being a Texas writer meant something special to me. I suppose it still does, but many Texas writers these days are more than regional writers. They live in Texas but they are widely known. For instance, Elmer Kelton, Chris Roberson and Joe Lansdale are Texas writers but they are read widely and the label--regional writer--does not apply. Michael Moorcock, one of my favorite writers, lives in Texas but no one in his right mind would label him a Texas writer, even though he did write "Tales from the Texas Woods." The only thing that might connect it to Texas is a mythic tale involving The Masked Buckaroo, who tracks an albino Apache known as El Lobo Blanco. Does that sound familiar? Interestedly enough, Chris Roberson in his forthcoming novel "The Book of Secrets" also has a similar western tale, which seems to connect to the regional root system of all Texans.

Nevertheless, I drove down to Austin on a Thursday afternoon to attend the latest conference. This was my third time to attend the Writers Conference and like the times before I was armed with a new book.

The first time I went to Austin to attend an agent conference, I was flogging "Vogel and the White Bull." The time after that I pushed my novel "Cave Gossip." This time I was trying to sell my first fantasy novel--"Okeanus." However, this time, things were different. In the past, I traveled to Austin full of hope and anxiety. I believed that fate would intervene and I would find the right agent for my books. This time I was different: I truly didn't care if I found an agent or not. You see I am approaching sixty and I have learned a thing or two. Some people say I have given up; others say I am cynical. However, now I see the whole thing as a process. I came to this conclusion about a year ago and as a result I returned to my roots as a writer. Not my Texas roots but my core values roots, as it were.

In the seventies I taught composition and rhetoric at a couple of universities. I spent three years at Stephen F. Austin State University and another three at Missouri State University (in those days it was known as Southwest Missouri State University). During that time I wrote poetry, short stories, and articles, and had some success. I wrote because I had to and wanted to. For some reason in the nineties I began to try to hit the long ball. As a result, I wrote a series of novels, with little or no success. I think what has changed for me over the last year or so is that I have stopped trying to hit a home run. I am working now on my technique; I am writing short stories and poems and trying to establish my voice. As I said to my friend Iain McDonald, a young adult writer from the Woodlands, I don't intend writing a query lesson for a long time to come.

So you ask, why was I driving down to Austin with a 150 word pitch in my briefcase? The answer is that I did pretty well in the Amazon/Penguin Breakthrough Novel contest in the spring; well enough, that is, to have gotten a really nasty review from Publisher's Weekly. I mean, I had never gotten a professional type review before, except for my poetry. Here was something I could pitch. At the very least I might make it to first base. So off I go to Austin with my pitch but with my new Zen-like attitude. To prove I am relaxed and a new man, I stay at a hotel well away from the conference; I eat Mexican food on Congress and drink margaritas; I drive over to Book People and browse for several hours, and then cross over to Waterloos. I am living the Austin writer's life.

On Saturday, when the main events start, I am still relaxed. I meet Iain McDonald in one of the topic rooms and have a good discussion about YA writing and I watch Michael Murphy of Max & Co work the conference. I conclude that this guy has to be the hardest working man in the business. I chat with Julie Schroecke about presentation techniques and I have lunch with Fort Worth fantasy writer, Robert Leonard, and we talk about Tolkien-type fantasy verses my favorite type of writing-- American pulp of the forties and fifties.

I am fortunate to meet Jonathan Lyons and Scott Hoffman, two agents I really admire. I follow their blogs and writings on publishing and I was impressed they were there in Austin at the Sheraton on a hot June day.

Nevertheless as the conference wanes, I am still maintaining my calm, old man attitude, and then it happens: I attend "Beyond the Strip: Inside the World of Comics & Graphic Novels" presentation. Suddenly I am a kid again, filled with the ardor and passion I always have had for writing.

I attended this presentation because of Rick Klaw. I am a fan of his work and it is through him I discovered Joe Lansdale, writer in residence in Nacogdoches. So during the ninety minute session with Rick Klaw, Tony Salvaggio, and Alan Porter, I was transported back to the east Texas pea-patch where I read comics under a cottonwood tree on hot summer days in the fifties. When I left I was vibrating with energy and anxious to get home and start writing. I was also armed with some suggested reading, which I quickly picked up, as I headed back to Dallas.

Rick Klaw's book, "Geek Confidential: Echoes from the 21st Century" is published by Chris Roberson's press--Monkeybrain Books. In that book Rick said something, which I am going to have to paraphrase because I can't remember where he said it, but it goes something like this--"Joe Lansdale and Michael Moorcock are mine." I understand this sentiment because certain writers are mine, too, and the Writers League of Texas Agents Conference reminded me of that fact. Stan Lee, Alan Moore, Michael Moorcock, Chris Roberson are mine, just as writing in Texas is mine.

All in all I would say it was a profitable time in Austin and no I didn't sell "Okeanus" and I don't really care. I am writing and that is what matters.

Beginning of "Mittilagart," sequel to Okeanus

“What time is it, Jørg?”

Schütze Jørg Mortesson turned over onto his back and raised his arm just enough to catch a glint of blue light from the burning building a hundred meters to the north.

“Five minutes before midnight. Now be quiet or the Ivans will hear us.”

“What day is it?” asked Erik Wallender.

Mortesson grunted and said, “You know it is the 22nd.”

“How do I know that?”

“Because I told you an hour ago that it was April 22, 1945.”

“Is it the Führer’s birthday?”

“That was two days ago; don’t you remember? They gave us Schnapps.”

Wallender turned away and shrugged.

Mortesson scratched the thick stubble of his red beard. Lice hopped around his dirt encrusted finger nail and he sighed. “Erik, do you want to make it home to Stockholm?”

Mortesson waited as Wallender thought the question over. “I’m not sure. How will they treat us now that the Germans have lost the war?”

A shot rang out and Mortesson calculated it came from one of the government buildings to the east. The Ivans were tightening the rope and he could feel it scratching his neck. He swallowed and then answered, “They will probably hang us but you don’t have to worry about that, Erik.”

“Why is that, Jørg?”

Mortesson laughed and then spat onto the bare ground where a few feeble blades of grass struggled to survive. “Because, my dear Erik, the Ivans are going to cut our throats first.”

There was a cough and then the lieutenant called out from his slit trench south of their hole: “shut up over there.” In answer a Russian machine gun sprayed the brick wall that formed the northern line of the Nordland Division’s defenses on the edge of the Tiergarten, south of the river Spree. Mortesson pressed his body against the damp soil and held onto his helmet. Bursts of machine fire continued for several seconds and then stopped.

Mortesson crawled to an opening in the wall and peered out across the wide avenue that bordered the Tiergarten on the north. Several new fires had broken out in the building across the way and he could see silhouettes of Russian soldiers running in the ruins.

“Erik, prepare yourself. They are coming.”

Mortesson picked up his Mauser and entrenching tool and moved to a bit of raised earth that he used as a firing stand. Suddenly, he stopped because the usually vociferous Wallender was silent. “Christ,” he muttered as he quickly crawled back to their hole.

Wallender lay face down in a puddle of blood.

Mortesson rubbed his chin with his left hand and nervously spat again onto the ground. Shivering from exhaustion, fear, and pity, he checked to see if Erik lived. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he closed his friend’s eyes with his right hand and then slowly relieved him of his ammunition, grenades, canteen, three cigarettes, and a bar of chocolate.

The Eye of the Mage

a gray mage
with one blue eye
spins within
the image

no matter
the gray-ness
of the mage
or the blue-ness
of the eye

in our age
of sin
the image
wins

because mindless
talk tells
tales
that silence
thought

Death Visits Kilgore on Sunday

deadness
surrounds us

interrupts us
from our rounds

nestled
in nests

it flies
in our face

surprising us
even though

we knew
it was there

waiting

now
and for ever

-∞ space in self

in time

from right
to left

we turn
toward home

our advance
retreats
into self

a minor mirror
of nature's
preeminence

and negative
space

Review Of Steve Parker's "Rebel Winter"

I rarely cry. It is usually at the end of a war movie where a person has given his or her life for the good of the squad and bagpipes are playing. Like at the end of "Gunga Din" or "Wee Willie Winkie," or even "Saving Private Ryan," although there were sadly no pipes.

While reading Steve Parker's first military science fiction novel, Rebel Winter, I found myself tearing up several times. Each time a well-drawn character sacrifices himself for the unit or a group of men die in a burning Chimera or a beloved colonel runs pell-mell into a mass of orks I felt a tear rolling down my cheek. Consequently, I have to say early in this review that the writing is damn good, the characters are well-drawn, the battle scenes are intense, and Parker's knowledge of Warhammer 40,000 fluff is dead-on accurate.

The novel involves a regiment of Vostroyan Firstborn fighting both rebels and orks on the ice-crusted planet Danik's World. The Vostroyans are similar to Russian Cossacks and their culture is tribal and militaristic. According to their laws, every firstborn son of every household serves in the Vostroyan regiments. Vostroyan soldiers and officers maintain an archaic appearance and their history can be traced back to the Horus Heresy. They pass their weapons down from firstborn to firstborn and are usually worth more than the guardsmen who carry them. They serve ten-year terms but most re-enlist because their persona is based on their identification with the regiment and the company in the regiment in which they serve.

In Rebel Winter Parker plays with the Vostroyan "fluff." First, the Vostroyan leadership is picked from the nobility. Our protagonist Captain Grigorius Sebastev is not a noble; instead, he is a sergeant, elevated to leadership on the battlefield. Second, Vostroyans pick the first-born son to serve the Emperor; Stavin, another important character, possesses a secret, which haunts him: he is a second-born son. Third, the Vostroyans are a close-knit tribal unit. The Commissar of Fifth Company is not a Vostroyan but from Delta Radhima. He is dark and tall and obviously a foil for the short and stocky Sebastev.

Parker begins the novel with a framing device: Captain Sebastev is on trial in the Exedra Udiciarum Seddisvarr for some unspecified crime. The story, then, is a remembering rather than an unfolding. In my opinion, a framing device is a two-edged sword. It either creates suspense by engaging the reader with the question: why is this man on trial, or it dissipates suspense because the reader knows the protagonist will survive. In this novel, the framing device accomplishes three things: one, it is simply a sketch and does not explain who any of the bizarre characters in the courtroom are; therefore, it creates an element of suspense and expectation; two, it begs the question of why this captain is on trial; and, three, at the end of the novel it provides the springboard for a sequel (which I suspect is its primary purpose).

Once, we enter the "remembering," we are plunged head-first into the action. The Vostroyans are fighting a battle of attrition against both rebels and orks. Here is where Parker shines. The battle scenes are brutal and beautifully constructed. Very rarely is an author able to manipulate a squad, let alone a company, and Parker does it well and efficiently. Something else that he does well is to describe the strategic elements of a battle. I particularly appreciate the map at the beginning of the book. By referring to it during the reading I was able to see and understand both the strategic and tactical decisions made by the combatants.

In conclusion, I found the novel a brilliant first effort. I enjoyed the mixture of pathos and bravura in the characters and when I say characters I mean many characters, each one is well-drawn and memorable. I have two minor criticisms though: one, the framing device distracts from the strength of the plot and, two, in an attempt to fully handle his "company" of characters, Mr. Parker switches point of view several times, which I found disturbed the smooth progression of the narrative. In that regard,I prefer either a single or at most a double point of view.

As a final word, I would recommend this novel to both Warhammer fans and military science fiction readers. I think Steve Parker now shares the stage with other great militray science-fiction writers like Dan Abnett, Andy Remic, Paul Kearney, Chris Roberson, and Steven Pressfield.

I am looking forward to reviewing his latest novel--Gunheads.

Wolfgirls Dance under June's Moon

Caesar nominates
the lion month

its blonde
rays retain
the sun's
son
within a jar
sealed
with beeswax

it contains
oyster beds
marinated in Mexican
brine

groves of palms
spitting purple dates

and their astral
love preserved
during the white nights
of die Deutsche Zeit

but finally
it is time
to spike the seal
and shuck
the shells

blue
he refrains
from flight

and howls
beneath June's
green moon

Heliocentricity

aten is god
of the sun

the son
of big mind
outside the tent

in his heavenly
mathematics
the sense
that oneness
exceeds many
shines

however
clowns divide
the circle
twice squared
and their gods
abide

within
a panoply
resides

while without
the circle
revolves
and the tide
subsides

Polytheism during the Time of Akhenaten

the stars
revolve
and shine
on the maker
of the mannered
statutes
and pyramids

gods of bronze
silver and gold
with stone
present
a plural
panoply
of imbued
steel
natural rock
and made fabric

god-ness in single-ness
outside the outer

both relinquishes
and supports
many

Circus Arrives in Munich in Oktober

the ring
beneath canvas
invites
clowns
in tiny cars
and ladies
with big whips
to perform
daily

big mind
waits
without

Short Review of Dan Abnett's "Traitor General"

In 1967, Alistair MacLean published "Where Eagles Dare." The book was made into a film with Richard Burton and a young Clint Eastwood in 1968. The plot involves an elite force of British and American Commandos who go behind enemy lines to rescue a United States general captured while enroute to Crete to meet with Russian counterparts. The story is replete with secrets and betrayals plus wholesale mayhem.

As a young man in 1968, I was enamored with the film and even today I will happily re-watch it. What does this have to do with "Traitor General," you may ask? Just this, the plot of the Maclean Book and Abnett's book have the same plot. Is that a bad thing? Absolutely not. The two works may have the same skeleton but Abnett makes the material definitely his own.

In "Traitor General" Gaunt and twelve of his "Ghosts" drop onto a planet controlled by the enemy. This planet, Gereon, an agri-planet within the Sabbat system is brilliantly and I would say beautifully rendered through Abnett's almost perfect prose. In addition, Abnett looks behind the curtain and begins to develop the Chaos world. In a recent interview, Abnett shows that he has been contemplating the workings of the forces of Chaos carefully. He has puzzled out the irrefutable conclusion that in order to function, it (the Chaos worlds)needs organizations, bureaucracies, and technologies. In this novel he illustrates the working of the world and the mind of the people trapped there and living there.

I cannot praise this novel enough for its execution and its depth. Abnett creates believable characters throughout. It doesn't matter if the character is a Ghost, a Chaos Space Marine, or a partisan; they are all roundly and soundly developed.

Finally, no one writes about the mechanical and technical aspects of modern war better than Abnett. I could smell the oil on the barrel of the las-guns while I was reading the novel.

Seven Steps in Sense Sequence plus Two

we have
explored
the primal word
and magic numbers
but do not forget
the sense of color

Wittgenstein and Goethe
knew its worth
and the cabalists
its symbol

expect now
both number
and color
when we do
what we do

to make
or un-make
poetry of
nine levels
three squared

Reading John Dee in the Bath

the primal word
reacts
to expansion

emotional flutters
within my ear

a buzzing
of silk wings

and muttering
of a gibbering ghost

a précis of
John Dee

proceeds
to the next
numen
perhaps Bes

therefore Lull
lull me
into an alphabetical
mysticism

count ten
on my fingers
and label them
B to K

A Sunday Fight Ends Now

now

we have
now

and
the memory
of the not now

the next now
is not yet now
and maybe
never will be

our now
continues
until there is no now

a point
marked
posthumously
as the final

now

Tiny Bats

hang like green grapes
beneath Congress Street Bridge

at dusk
they drop

gulp air
and jettison
guano

their numbers
paint the sky
black

they spread
like treacle
through ebony
night

on Bollingen Island
fox bats
fall free
under ebon
limbs

at dusk
they eat
pomegranates
with simian hands

at dawn they sleep
suspended

swaying
in sour wind

Freud's Pillow or Lot's Lot

soaked

in her juices
for six decades

he now awaits
her second nonage
to air his fate
and faults

maybe chalk
from Dover cliffs
is his place
to crumble
into white waves

but before the stone
hardens into sulphur
and flakes into salt

he looks back
and sees flames
engulf city walls

and salamanders
dance in red

cloaked

Order in the Time of Ramses

twelve hours of day
balanced against twelve of night

the rule writ
on papyrus

work in light
sleep at twilight

but to be safe
light the oil lamp
at dusk
to drive
daemons away

The Futility of Strategems

gardens grow wild
within the squared
circle
of big mind

throughout its spheres
nature orders
chaotic growth

and cosmic mechanics
whirl metallic wheels
as daffodils drip
drops of oily dew
onto blind eyes

Review of "The Serpent and the Moon" by Princess Michael of Kent

I agree with several reviewers that the book is repetitious but I never found it tedious. I also agree that Catherine de'Medici gets lost in the telling. The book might have best been posed as a love story between Henri II and Diane de Poitiers or a sociological look at Renaissance life.

The book seems to be written in discreet chapters with little concern for the overall narrative structure, although the book does progress sporadically from the rule of Francois I to Charles IX.

Now, you might ask, why have I given it four stars? The answer is simple: I liked the book for its digression into the minutia of the daily life of the Renaissance Courts of Francois I and Henri II.

God is in the details (Le bon Dieu est dans le detail-Flaubert)and reading Princess Michael of Kent's imagining of the French court is to be dazzled by the details.

No fact is too trivial for her to catalog and discuss. For instance, She delves into the social and sexual practices of the nobles with a eye for the mundane and quotidian. She discusses the utensils they use at dinner and the clothes they wear or don't wear--such as undergarments.

She also looks closely at the the familial relations and the political machinations that arise from those relationships and she discusses the wars between the Renaissance Kings and their petty and brutal bids for power. There are any even side-roads into English politics and appearances of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, Mary Tudor, and Mary, Queen of Scots.

And within this broad historical panorama, we learn about dog breeding, hunting, best sexual positions for conception, use of cosmetics, hygiene (or lack thereof) of the royals, de Medici's use of alchemy, soothsayers, astrology, and poison, expansion of Paris, Renaissance gardening and architecture.

In the end, as I read the work, I felt I had an understanding of one aspect of French society--the court. Perhaps, a criticism is that we don't see the filth and poverty of the peasants but, of course, that was never her aim. All-in-all I found the book to be a pleasant, breezy, romp through a complicated and brutal period of French History. And in that description lies both the weakness and strength of the book.

Bolano's "The Romantic Dogs"

With "2666," Roberto Bolano is now a sensation in the United States. "2666" is a remarkable book, full of engrossing narratives; however, I find "The Romantic Dogs" in some respects more satisfying.

It is common knowledge that Bolano considered himself first and foremost a poet and I believe he is right, although his fame here in America will derive from his fiction.

Many reviewers have spent all their time talking about Bolano and Chile, as if "The Romantic Dogs" is only a political book. However, I wonder if the reviewers made it past the first poem. Yes, there are poems that make reference to political events but how can a Latin American not be political. However, politics are only a part of the soup of existence. Bolano writes about being in the sense that a philosopher writes about being.

"The Romantic Dogs" is an amazingly cohesive work. This is not a collection of poems written as one-offs. Instead, the poems hold together through various rhetorical devices: repetition of images, symbols, and themes.

The overall theme of the work is the shortness of life, the cruelty of illness, the fragility of existence, and the the beauty of poetry.

Unifying images are dreams, blackness, white worms, snow, cars, motorcycles, burros, films, detectives.

Bolano announces in the first poem of the collection that the dream of poetry opened up the void of his spirit and accompanied him through his life.

The first poem of the collection, "The Romantic Dogs," announces this theme. "I'd lost a country/but won a dream." He adumbrates the importance of poetry in the penultimate poem of the collection "Muse:" "she's the guardian angel/ of our prayers./ She's the dream that recurs."

"The Romantic Dogs" presents a brave story--because ultimately Bolano is a dramatic poet--of a dying poet fighting to remain here in being "with the romantic dogs."

Tick-Tock

to SarahA


the real
you deal
is not here

the real
I see
in my liminal
state
is not
your here

here I hear the deaf
and feel the blind

you feel the deaf
and hear the blind

your here
is there

however
our worlds
are there
in the big mind

the singular mind
revolves like a silver
cog
within a brass wheel

guided by the north star
it turns

tick-tock, spin-spin
spin-spin, tick-tock

Sulphur

sulphur
the driest salt
sprinkles
from her fevered brain

her projection
is her protection

but it makes
no sense
that sulphur
as salt
possesses savor
only after fault

Working on proofs for "Cave Gossip"

My new novel "Cave Gossip," the follow-up to "Vogel and the White Bull," relies heavily on iconography--both sacred and profane--to express its meaning. Here is a sacred image from a church in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the setting for the finale of "Vogel and the White Bull."

The title--"Cave Gossip"--comes from my poem in"Petroglyhs," of the same title.

Eye

he wanted
to be seen

but he had
not read
the rule

seeing
requires light

but light
burns skin

so he
withdrew

within

once again

Primal Patriarch

he appeared
then her

his son died
murdered by his brother

eventually he died
from her
to the earth

it was his end
but not the end

the hierarchy
arose
from a cut
pruned
from a yellow rose

now he ascends
and descends
toward transcendence

Fact of the Doing Thing

the job
that works
us
is not
the one
we waited
for in fact
the work
we do
is not
the one
we dreamed
of nor trained
for nor interviewed
with nor even
wanted
instead we do
what we do
because we
can do
no other
thing

Return

after each blow
the worm returns
to its rose
to spin silk
for lace
she makes
under the window

Theme of Mittilagart

ein jeder engel ist schrecklich--Rilke

Chris Roberson's "Set the Seas on Fire"

Red Rook Review has just posted its first review.

Forget La Gioconda

the hierarchy of category
begins with alpha's breath

branches off the knowing tree
and tunnels through worm mold

the rose is the snail's end
a breathless line that connects
old Adam to the castaway

categories incarnate
as each initiate contributes
a thread to the maker's lace

so all the Vermeers wait
with frail facticity

to prove omega's line
ends with lace's last design

Method

The chow barks
a snail's portrait

its threefold
sign
triples one round
shell

to read its whorl
is to hear a star gasp

a frozen breath inward

to hear the whorl
is to read a sea-green sea

Sargasso
into a blue
Geist

Her Spring Revolt

vowel revolution
leads to noun resolution

when word-scree
blocked the pass
I brought my spoon
and cereal bowl

and when word-shards
severed the Irish trail
I fetched my fork
and Austrian plate

but when I was late
you flew North
like a headless crow

with neither caw nor care

Abstraction

Rousseau paints green
on the jungle canvas

his yellow parrots
parade on jagged limbs
where jaguars sleep
jade in verdant shadows

mottled leaves dry
from an afternoon rain
and sun-threads reign
over jaundiced puddles

where parrots drink
and the Paraclete
sleeps shuttered
in the jaguar's keep

Mittilagart--the Valkyries Arrive

The first chapter is finished. Eight thousand words exactly as I planned. I intend eighty days to a novel. Writing about life after death is a new one and I am trying to push the magical envelope. I am also trying to "textualize" my dialogue. Let's see if they (the very young editors) can teach an old dog new tricks.

Process D'or

Line ends
your breath

but to breathe
signifies
a four-fold
sign
of green

so exit
timeless
and dream
blue

but do not fall
or fail
for a bruise
re-boots
black

Rimbaud's Color Wheel

The center-word
does not hold
its color-sounds
alone

they swirl
within the sun-threads
first black then white
green then blue

until the red appears
so red that we see
gold

the danger
though is that blue
bruises black
and begins to turn
again

Chicago Lyre

desire
fuels
your blue flame

so do
not blame

the coal man
who fills
the gray bin

or the red brick
that warms
your face

likewise
do not harm
your faithful cow
that kicks the trace

instead embrace
the fire-threads
that embroider
green dreams
with yellow
word-shards
and the inner star
that singes
blue moons

Beckett Beckons

curtain call
and we take
to the boards

we play Beckett
in the round
and we wait

we wait for lights
and applause

we wait
for roses
and cheering
crowds

we wait
for Beckett
on his deepest ground
as we play the round

Mittilagart

I am three thousand words into my new novel and it has taken a strange turn. A Swedish volunteer in the Nordland Division is killed in the Battle of Berlin and taken to Valhalla by Birgit Oiseau, Jacques Oiseau's dead wife. Thus begins the sequel to "Okeanus."

Rose + Snail

the quotidian
is today
and tomorrow
until the end

the end
is no concern
of the snail's
or mine

our task
is to struggle
to the center
of the rose
or breath
at the end
of the line

breathe-signs
signal signatures
signed

only then
will done
be
done
and words
sealed

Die Vergangenheit

I enjoy bonitas
dancing the tango
but when I think
about the petit pendant
I know the après durée
is the proper place to play

Chows Bark Primal Words

to the two Ws-Walt and Wallace


they sing the lyric of the lower man

as black-tongued chows they bark
primordial words like familial hounds

their harried language howls to the languid
lovers of the lower level and like
puritans in their log cabins they pray
for the patriarch's provision of profit

owls observe their shadowed orbs
beneath the New England woods
and doves huddle in their hutch
cooing to the sweet squabs
that squeak tomorrow's sun

their fresh feathers fray
throughout the night's somber
embrace and the moon's frigid light

at dawn a pigeon carries a message
to the sun-knitted in angelic sun-threads

the primal word images god
through the lower ones
and incarnates the quotidian
on parchment

receiving the message on winged tongues
the pilgrims pray for transcendence
but the elect find their wealth
in the moldering soil of the worms

the worms wiggle on hooks of desire
the chow tongues once blackened catch fire

Quarry

to Anschel


my role was ordained

I dig stones
they cement

they are masons
and their measures
are exact

they build
pyramids

each rock
locks
inextricably
to another

Stone Measures

poetry sleeps within the stone
while the stone measures the line

the act on board is made
and the doing
done and now alone

like a castaway
the line moves on
as does the raft
as does the bottle
all three bobbing
up and down, then sink
as the horizon shrinks
and seagulls squeal

we remember it
but we cannot recall it

Red Rook Review

I just launched a new blog to house my reviews of "slipstream" literature. The advance copy of the first book to be reviewed has arrived and I hope to have my review up within the next few weeks. My goal is to write substantial reviews of between 1500 to 2000 words.

My Stylistic Choice

monotones
drone in a gallery

hushed whispers
buzz about without adjectives
and then a laugh

a canvas
seasoned gray
with a violent
splash
of red
hangs
on a wall
painted
egg-shell

a dour Dutch
portrait
of a bowl
of brown eggs
two dead fowl
a tumbled glass
of ruby port

and a Burgermeister's
daughter shedding
a gelid tear
poised
on her blue-green
cheek

Haiku-eins

silent spring-snow gifts
grass sprinkled with pear petals
and doves in silk drifts

GI Home 1968

to Harold and Gene

at first light
fog fragments woods
as three men
find the green clearing

they survey
the square
and stake
stakes
into sallow
soil

they twist
twine
around pine
posts
as a preamble

they shovel
sleep-sand
with sharpened
spades

and
measure
flat feet
with fours
and twos

in this rite
they found
foundations
with first
steps

and slay
snakes
with Parsifal's
spear

White Bears Red Snakes

white bears on white
snow and blue ice
hunger for black
seals with black eyes
sleeping
on green ice
and white snow
when
ice melts
islands appear
and floes
flow
down streams
between the rifts
of the archipelago
south toward ship
lanes where steam
bellows and screws
torque toward green
land and brown land
in the west
green-blue parrots
shriek in dark jungles
where snakes
entwine
between black
limbs
as they shed
red skin

Readers

he writes a poem
she reads his poem
it is not his poem
it is another thing
her poem

she writes a poem
he reads her poem
it is not her poem
it is a new thing
his poem

they write
they read
the message is not their message
the bottle is not their bottle
it is a found thing
a new thing
the lost thing
the bottle

Northwest Passage

to Ms O'Leary


Doctor John Dee
read four thousand books
and spoke
to Annael
in tongues.

She was his muse
and Spenser's virgin queen.

Together they scryed
a darkened way
to a manifest
destiny.

Through chartered
companies
and bartered ships
they struggled
beneath sea-green
ice
and beached
one fateful day
as castaways
in auriferous
Cathay.

Liminal State

The other Oyle is prest out
of the dried Cocus, which is called Copra


Deep down
on the lower level,
beneath the sea-green
breakers, we walk on our head.

At night we dream
of parakeets in palms;
brown-bronze women
dance on yellow sand.

Yesterday we piloted
a silver schooner
through the archipelago
and traded Gaugins
for copra.

We serve the sea-spider;
we breathe through gills.

Tomorrow we hide
in a coral niche
and count starfish
with tattooed eyes.

Friday

I in-dwell within the sea-spider's niche.
Black and spindly, she spreads eight legs
into the nether reach of our aquatic strangeness.
Together we fall toward the star's reach
and embrace beneath the comet's tail.
Together we shuffle on our heads;
our feet slide against the surface's tide.
Anemone and starfish shape our single scar;
the remnant of saturnalian incrustation.

Chasing Images

John Skelton wrote in 1522: That he wolde than make The devyls to quake Lyke a fyerdrake.

August 13, 1961

I see it now: the dappled light
twining through the leaves
of the sweet gum tree,
where Gerald hammered the yellow pine
with nails stolen from homes
purchased on the GI Bill.
I supply our house with apple crates
filled with pulp fiction and comics,
as we retreat from glassy-eyed blonds,
wearing white blouses and pink poodle skirts;
their pony-tails bounce with each Elvis
skitter and roll. We huckleberry our way
through the summer riding the wind surf;
the limbs, lissome and frothy with green sap,
roll and pitch like a raft on the Mississippi.
Wasps buzz past onion-ed ears and skinned knees,
while ants savage the rough bark, sucking nectar
from the bleeding nodes of the sweet gum.
It's a portal, glassed as oblique
as Alice's mirror, and as porous.
Through this gate we walk on our heads
and hide when the hobos pass
under us and the jets stream overhead.
A crisis is brewing in Berlin
and everyone is on alert, except us.
We wait in our silenced space
for the call of the mothers at dusk.

Part of Chapter Three of Vogel #5

Löwe was sitting at his writing table in front of two French windows overlooking the garden and the swimming pool. He held a Cartier fountain pen in his left hand. In front of him was a short stack of white paper made in Italy, which Löwe specially ordered from a shop in Venice. The top page was half covered by his strange, tiny handwriting. To the right was a copy of Plato’s Theaetetus in Greek and further to the right, a stack of blue index cards. Drago took no notice of the books or the writing; he simply placed the tray in front of Löwe, who had pushed his papers further to the right to make room. “It was always like this,” thought Drago. “He is like a baby bird waiting for me to bring his food. When it arrives, he pushes everything away to snap up every morsel. It is like he is starving. What an appetite for such an old man.”

Löwe was hungry as he always was in the morning. He fantasized that his dreams burned up a lot of calories throughout the night. He had been thinking about his dreams when Drago knocked on the door. Last night he had had a strange one. He was fighting in a medieval city against a large foreign army, equipped with war elephants. In the midst of battle, Löwe stood upon an elevated podium and called out to the elephants to come to him until they heard and came, one from the right, one from the left, and one from the center.

“What did it mean?” he asked. An elementary component of dream interpretation was to say the elephants represented a part of him. He suspected they represented three primal sources of power, which he could not control. At the beginning of the dream, they were out of control, destroying men and material, but upon his command, they came to him and stopped.

“Why were there three?” He asked as his mind wondered over the number three. He knew the images had at least two components: meaning, which could be deciphered intellectually; and emotion, which would have to be investigated from the standpoint of its feeling-value.

In other words, to fully comprehend the images he would need to meditate upon the image of the elephant from several viewpoints, a task, which, once begun, seemed quite daunting in its complexity. He rubbed his head, an act which was unconscious, and which signaled he was deep in thought as he let his mind wonder over the image of the elephant, he felt its great size, its color, the stiff hairs of its body protruding from its leathery skin, its smell, its sound as it shifted from right to left on its ponderous legs, larger than tree trunks. He examined the metal and leather harness, which held the platforms onto the three great elephants’ backs and he could see the armored bodies of the archers perched on top of the elephants. He saw the legs of the men sitting on the necks of the large beasts, the wooden handles of the hook in their hands, which they used to turn and guide the great beasts. He imagined the elephants’ pink mouths and their swinging trunk. He asked himself how he felt about the elephant and his first reaction was a feeling of awe at their great size and strength. So how did he control them? What power did he possess to call them?

The dream reminded him of Ganesha; the elephant-headed God of the Hindus, and the first god worshipped at every ceremony, which had the head of an elephant and the body of a round, rotund, overweight man. Accompanying Ganesha are the hooded snakes wrapped around his waist, the lotus, which Ganesha holds in one of its two left hands, an ax, which symbolizes Genesha’s ability to destroy evil, a noose, which emphasizes mankind’s connection to human desire, and the mouse, which provides him with a mode of transportation.

Ganesha was a good sign, thought Löwe, and the appearance of the elephants in his dream was also a strong vision, a message from his unconscious.

Löwe also recognized Ganesha’s duality. He found, or least suspected, a difference between those creatures that bore the head of an animal, such as Ganesha and the Minotaur, and those creatures like fauns and centaurs, which had human heads and animal bodies. He felt that mythological creatures with animal heads were controlled by their natural or animal instincts while those like the centaur and the faun had their human nature controlled by their lower body, which was more basic in its demands and desires. He had not worked out all of the associations and differences, but he suspected a difference. Ganesha, of course, was nothing like the Minotaur, who was rapacious and sadistic.

He immediately thought of a series of dry points, which he had seen in Picasso’s atelier during the war in Paris. He remembered they were called the Vollard Suite and the one, which he remembered vividly almost fifty years after he had seen it, was #68, the Minotaur Caressing a Sleeping Woman. He remembered the day he had visited the atelier. He appeared along with several others for drinks with the Spanish painter. Although he was a German, a soldier, an occupier of Paris, he was on good terms with many of the artists. After all, he was a cultural attaché and his good will allowed many artists in the city to continue their work, to enjoy the patronage of the Third Reich, to sell their art, to receive ample food, and to enjoy their life. Picasso was a Spaniard and Spain was friendly toward Germany. Although Picasso was no friend of Franco and the existing Spanish government, he was willing to meet with Germans who were interested in art in 1941. There were many young, well-educated German officers who were appreciated surrealistic art, even degenerate art, as the Nazi regime called it. Löwe thought the Nazi propaganda against the expressionists and surrealists was ridiculous and he was very interested in Picasso, as well as several others. He was a personal friend of Cocteau and Brasillach and he tried to court as many of the French artists as he could. He had read Breton on surrealism and he obtained a copy of the magazine Minotaure from a friend in Paris, who provided it to him while he was training in Russia in 1934, the year he had met Sartre and Raya. Consequently, when he arrived in Paris as a cultural attaché, one of the first things he did was attempt to see Picasso. It was no problem to find out where the Spaniard lived and he could have easily entered the atelier, but he did not want to use the power at his disposal; instead, he decided to court the Spaniard and play to his ego. When he finally met him, he asked about the Vollard Suite, about the series of dry points, which spanned many years. When Picasso showed him the works, he was immediately attracted to the mythic character, which Picasso was obviously using as an alter ego. Löwe realized immediately that Picasso’s Minotaure was connected to the Dionysian spirit and he began to identify with the lusty representation of the Minotaur. As a result of the strong feeling tone he associated with the creature, Löwe began to investigate the source and quality of his feelings. He now believed that the appearance of Ganesha was similar to those earlier associations with the Minotaur and that his identification with the Minotaur and the appearance of Ganesha were signaling some significant change in his psychic life.

Löwe believed in both physical and spiritual evolution. The spiritual evolution was always a movement toward wholeness and this progression manifested itself to consciousness through images, images sometimes in the form of mandalas. With the appearance of the elephant, he felt his unconscious was trying to signal something to his conscious mind; therefore, he had to use various psychological techniques to learn the meaning of the images. This process was tedious and long in duration. He knew that now the elephant had appeared to his conscious mind it would stay with him for some time. It would stay until he understood its meaning.

“Shall I put this down, sir?” asked Drago, reminding the old man of the present and his hunger.

“Of course. I am sorry, I was lost in thought.”

Drago had the coffee pot in his right hand and a cup and saucer in the left.

“Your food is getting cold.”

“What time is it?”

“It is 8:25.”

“I must hurry. There is so much to do before the journalists arrive.” Löwe said absently, as he began to eat the now cold oatmeal.

Drago poured him a cup of coffee and then put the silver coffee pot down and retired from the room, leaving the man to his thoughts.

As Löwe slowly chewed the oatmeal, he imagined the Minotaur lying on a bed with a woman sprawled across his lap, while the sculptor, another character of the Minotaur saga of Picasso, lay on the other side of the woman, holding a champagne flute in one hand and a swooning woman in his left. The Dionysian atmosphere was so obvious that one had to start from there in the analysis of the sketch. The image of the Minotaur touched a psychological cord and reminded him of his years in Paris before the war, a time of great emotional and intellectual activity for him. Now, another mythical creature had entered the stage, Ganesha, a mixed being as well, full of strength, exuberance, and life. Löwe, though old in body, felt ripeness in his mind and a stirring somewhere in his loins. He was not dead yet.

He felt the images of the elephant signified a feeling of strength, a solidity of mind and concentration. He reached for the stack of blue index cards and wrote the words: Ganesha, Dionysus, Minotaure, Picasso, and Elephant. He would have to explore each name and meditate upon them. He had had a long experience with dreams and dream analysis and he knew the dream was the via regia to his unconscious mind and that once this passageway was opened, unlimited images would force their way into his conscious mind, just as water would flow from the earth to the surface at a spring. He imagined himself dipping a gourd into a spring.

Freedom is Between the Notes

poetry blooms on the paths of faery


Mr. and Mrs. Stevens select a black Steinway
for their sun room in anticipation of summer.
Like a black bird it awaits the sirens
that sing operettas on the west side
between the ice-cream vendor from Venice
and the jeweler from Charleville.
After the thaw, silent summer arrives
and Mrs. Stevens takes a steam train alone
to the Poconos and Mr. Stevens remains
in the city to advocate for the insureds
and play the piano. For seven hours straight
the first night he scratches the ivory keys
like a snowcat against Orpheus' tree.
And so proceeds the solstice quotidian;
the infinitesimal gesture of their separation:
Mrs. Stevens golfs and Mr. Stevens plays.
Once, however, he pauses to erase a moist circle
left by his highball glass and Mrs. Stevens writes
requesting more money. He begrudgingly wires
her five dollars. On another day, he puzzles
out the latest Schoenberg and she buys
a dress. In August rain falls on Manhattan
island and the water drains into the sea.
Most days though, Mr. Stevens pilots
a skiff between the keys of half-notes
that litter the green waters of the archipelago.

Insels

Islands of ice.
Electrical veins at night
silhouette brave borders
and slender shores. Stages
of yellow boards to play
the jester or the king,
while leviathans patrol
gulf streams and Catalinas
painted midnight-blue
hunt the darkness for Shelley's
monster preserved on a floe.

Anecdote of the Psyche

No continents exist in the summer islands.
Instead the islands in-dwell in the castaway's gray iris,
where white sharks circle beneath a beached raft
that lists left in a lissome jolt with each azure wave
and parakeets with blue and green wings pinion a tattoo
at retreat toward a swiss-ed psyche. Landfall
stretches the comet's tail and a maitre'd arrives
and recites French, while the barefoot castaway stands
on warm sand beside a chaise longue marked reserved.
In that internal archipelago a snowcat purrs
in an apple-barreled rum in the castaway's daiquiri,
informing him that the first island begats the second
and the second births the third, and the fourth
mirrors the first and the first awakens a fifth
and there is no end nor order outside the rhythm
of the islands and no sound except the drone of a Hellcat,
scouting off the mid-way, and the pilot's hand vibrating on the stick
as icebergs calve from green glaciers in the north.

Archipelago

The castaway sails between the northern islands
and mines a frozen continent with his art
like the earthworm mulls mold in Darwin's garden.

Anecdote of the Garden

Krazy Kat's fur is black
like the bruised wing of a crow.

Firecat is red
like the speckled eye
of a peacock's feather.

Krazy Kat appeared first,
like Abel, in the world.

Firecat will arrive later,
the last one before the end.

Firecat and Krazy Kat share
the silky sand of his garden.

Krazy Kat slumbers in the shrubs
in the doomed darkness of dusk,
while Firecat doozes on the grate.

Another mediates the in-between;
Snowcat purrs under the red rushes
beyond the bed of purple irises.

Snowcat loves Krazy Kat and Firecat.

Snowcat exists in perpetual winter;
she is the queen of snow
that blows from ether.

Snowcat cannot purr; her throat
is blocked; the glottal stop
is wrecked. Instead, she listens
while Firecat and Krazy Kat sing
a stone-song
trending toward harmony.

Paraclytus

The poem sags
from definition.
It is invisible
to all but the unseen,
who are only seen
by the invisible;
heard only
because
winged tongues
sometimes scratch
then erase
inked messages.

Milieu

this experience constitutes a world


The crystal sand in the stained
box
dwells within the snail's memory
of the castaway
who walked on his head.

Shipwrecked
yet again in the space
between the quietude of play
and the quotidian
worm mold, he scribbles
on Egyptian papyrus
an anecdote of a black
chow
that fetches an artifact
of glued feathers
and glittering leviathan bones.

Pete's Dead

It
flies on blue
and green
wings
from the chair
to the couch.
I shoot
a wooden arrow
with a rubber
tip
and strike
it dead.
Eros
weeps,
as we bury it
in a red
and black
matchbox
in the brown yard
behind the white
house.