Before Grendel

Oh hall of heroes, mead-hall magnificent,
let us see terror's terminus this night,
the rampage rocked by mighty men,
the end of Grendel's goings and comings and slayings
the very break of dawn to light the darkness.
He disdains swift swordplay,
sharp axes and bright spears,
the honed knife-edge of smith's handiwork,
and for those he kills: nothing.
No compensation for the decomposing.
No man-price in glittering gold for the grieving.
Guard over these, All-Father and Word-Lord,
that the ravens do not rip
and the wolves do not worry
and their bright steel blazes forth in the morning.

Ophiolators Revisited

Witness the miracle, as others have,
for only by witnessing it
may we understand the shedded
skins of our enemy.
Hooded and fanged and venomed are these wights,
wright-formed and wrought in Vulcan's furnace,
twisted like the thoughts of our own making
or else rippling against itself.
Muscle-bound and ichor-fueled reptiles,
tear at them my companions brave,
topple the archaic tower
and heat their cold-blooded
flesh with hateful blades.
Remind the kings which class
stands supremely inviolate.
MAMMALIA
is writ mandate.

Balin the Savage

I knew him that would be Balin
the doughtiest of doughty thanes,
that struck such strokes dolorous,
not once but twice
slayer
and enwheelchaired Pellam
and from him did the Wasteland sprout
shriveled and merciless.
Garlon, did ye know him?
Did you guess that this was he,
slayer,
that would cut down the knight invisible
the terror of Pellam's land?
And know ye Galahad who sired thee?
Twas not the lance but by the sword,
which, where did it lie?
Was it reforged?
For he who bore it broke it
slayer of kings
and another sword from the stone drawn to signal an everlasting reign.
Lament Balin fellows,
for he was a great a glorious thing,
Malory's truest son.

Beard to beard

He looks over the approaching army, and speaks:
It follows on from all of this
that the intensely Promethean desires
which afflict the poet
are not at all what he has set out to
and what he plans are not
the marble cliffs of yore
but the false rigidity of men
by formation and discipline gripped.
Beard to beard we shall be
beneath the darkest starlight
as all the arrows whiz by our ears
and torches flicker with the faintest exhalation
that all the lost provide.