The Superabundance of Arthuriana I

     There is an important question to be asked of Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur, and that is: why are there so many kings, and what happens to them?  Specifically, there are many kings in the beginning of the story, and only Arthur (and Mordred) by the end.  Why?  What happens to these kings, and what does it tell us about kingship?
     Perhaps the least important of these are kings like Pellinore and Lot.  Both are certainly described as kings, although their sons are not princes but rather the de Galis and Orkney clan-knights.  Malory does not say that Arthur usurped the princes of their birthright, and yet it seems that that must be what happened.  Is this the remembrance, almost a thousand years later, of a dark-ages unifier of Britain who was able to absorb the petty kingdoms into which the land had been sundered into his single monarchy?  Doubtful.  Then what else could this be?  Perhaps investigating the other kings will help.
     King Pellam is surely more important.  Pellam's wasteland is something meaningful, related to us by Merlin after he rescues Balin from the ruins of Pellam's castle (which is not called Corbenic here, is it a different castle?  Hard to believe that).  A bit of summary: Balin has chased the invisible knight Sir Garlon to a castle where there is a feast in progress.  At said feast a visible Sir Garlon strikes Balin and so Balin draws his sword and cuts him down.  Sir Garlon, it is revealed, is the brother of King Pellam, whose castle this is.  Than kynge Pellam caught in his hand a grymme wepyn and smote egirly at Balyn, but he put his swerde betwyxte hys hede and the stroke, and therewith hys swede braste in sundir.  Balin flees, racing through the castle until he finds a room marked by finery and a mervaylous spere strangely wrought.  Balin strikes true, wounds Pellam, and with the wounding the castle collapses about them.  And then Merlin rescues Balin for his unfortunate meeting with his brother.  Pellam's land is become a wasteland through the wounding.
     There is more to this story.  First, Lancelot's first act of infidelity is with a young woman at a place called Corbenic, Pellam's castle, and the young woman is Pellam's daughter.  Their child is Galahad, who is destined to find the Grail and restore the wasteland and heal Pellam.  Furthermore, when Galahad comes to Camelot to become a member of the round table, there is a second sword in the stone, which must be drawn by Galahad (no other can) and is Balin's sword (but was not Balin's sword braste in sundir?).  And remember, before all of this, when Balin was but a lad at Camelot, that he too drew a sword (from scabbard) which no other could draw, and was thus marked out by the ritual, and presumably this is the sword which Pellam sundered and which Galahad will draw from the stone.
     Perhaps another mythology will answer some of out questions.  Remember how Odysseus was recognized by his nurse?  She felt (and saw) along his thigh a wound he had achieved while boar-hunting as a lad before the Trojan War, from which he nearly died.  Robert Graves tells us that this is the mythological residue of a sacrifice of kings, like that at Nemi, where the king's genitals were torn off with a boar's tusk (or perhaps cut with a tusk-handled knife) in reenactment of the castration of Ouranos by Chronos and Chronos by Zeus and someday Zeus by Apollo.  Remember too that Chronos' dick and balls fell into the sea and from this sprang Aphrodite.  Aphrodite who loves Adonis, the sacrifice, who was gored by a boar.  Now we look to Balin's heraldry and what do we see: the boar, massive and furious, spread across his might chest which surely was muscled and hairy like the beast's.  Thus we must wonder if Balin is Odysseus' boar.  I answer: Surely, he is.
     More tomorrow.

Anthropophagus Beasts

Of all the beasts of the wild
our senses are dulled to simple vision,
sometimes hearing, but we have no
night-sight,
and yet it is the smell which announces them,
the rotting flesh of our fathers
and our sacrifices,
Andromeda's sweet-smelling decay
that drives Perseus to immortalize the monster
in Parian marble like Galatea.
I assume Medusa's statues were made
of metamorphic rock, with crystalline arrangement,
because igneous is shot through with imperfections
and sedimentary would crumble beneath the gaze.
But all of this is beside the point, which is:
Anthropophagus beasts are not of one kind.
Some stalk and some crawl and some slither
and some have the fire in their beating hearts
while others must make do with the worship of Sol Invictus.
Let me not be eaten by reptilian predators.

Logs

We can prove, with certainty,
just as John did,
the existence of the Adamic tongue
from which creation issued
from the original.
Milton's imagined version of existence before existence
need not be invoked
however much we enjoy the image
of the study lit by Lucifer.
It is study that concerns us
because the WORD ITSELF
has been troped and twisted and tautologized
into something it is not.
Think upon biology,
upon theology,
upon technology,
and not upon philosophy,
for there love & wisdom exist alone.
Geometry was clever not to include the word,
because it is founded upon that assertion
of truth beyond language.  We shall see.
But all the others are not studies but are WORDS,
the LANGUAGE of life, of the gods, of craft.
And can you believe that they believe
that WORDS are not thoughts?
as if John's story was not in Greek.

Parataxis

In the beginning there was not darkness,
no shadow cast by monuments of men,
though Tyndale's Vulgate, imperial and opulent,
was already in the mind.
But soon enough there was no twist, iamb or trochee
that could escape it, and all subordination
(Did Thomas H. know?  Did Thomas M.?)
transformed into parallel clauses.
And this is how the story went,
founders and builders with their mind turned by it,
Cooper, long after Turner's truth spread west,
told the story of king, ruddy and majestic,
fresh from the fields where they stood signifier for themselves.
And let us not forget thorny Nate,
Puritanical,
the whale-man dedicated that book to him,
through which one might depopulate the sea,
wrestle with Leviathan,
and undo what was done in the beginning.
And yet he used the words
which cannot belong to him.
And Hemingway must have known
that his 'ands' had antecedents,
his narrative of subsequent but parallel clauses
was not created from nothing.
And we still see it today, the long shadow of the king.
Is the only one who we have left,
Crevecoeur the Ophiolater
(a British man found that out)
because he heard it second hand?
If only we read and read and read
and knew for sure.

Eclipsed Starlight

The stars shine no less brightly
though they, unknowing, will be eclipsed
by the demiurgic vomiting of the Apollonian sphere,
sunlight before starlight.
And so little of it, spit out into the void
actually forming the cast shadow of our immensity,
call it an eclipse, why don't you.
For truly it is a titanic undertaking
to light the world.
But there are wolves in the sheepfold,
slavering and wicked
and if I told you that their hunger dwarfed
the immensities we have already discussed
would you believe me?
I think not.

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.

In my Dreams

This hyena laughter rings and rounds my mind
and if I should repay it, bladed and armored and in kind,
my own laughter shall find itself owned
by one in wilderness alone.
Terrible and wonderful and all those other adjectives
do not begin to describe my own reality, objective or subjective,
universal or unversed or otherwise
for all this scale is brought down to size by the dwarfing corridors
of my mind.
And all my enemies will find themselves stored away here,
their challenges ringing between my ears, for:
"Any who threaten my home or my family will soon have a place in my dreams."

FUBAR

They are all of them FUBAR
who cross this river, not knowing that it is a Styx
or a Lethe for they have forgotten.
The briefing told them:
"Advance to the river bank,
dig in,"
but there is something cowardly and against their warrior-ethos
in digging in the dirt like dogs,
and so instead they advance on the citadel,
its black and oily war-smoke rising up like a banner
above the battle-plain.
Underfoot crunch the bones
of those long-dead warriors
who fought here long before they died,
the marrow sucked out in great slurpings and gnawings
until nothing is left but the brittle remainder
of a warrior who almost never-was,
who is FUBAR too.

Mask Yourself

Mask yourself
for maskless we are mortal
and made in an image we should not share in
and cannot shake the feeling
that our vigilance
and our valor
is the lesser when victory serves violence
and not vice-versa.

Though ye beings of pure light
may shine down on all of us
it is from the unlighted
corridors of the mind
that we strike.

The Man of Metal

There he stood, the man of metal,
encased in his armor and enshrined in his own glory
through deeds beyond the ken of mortal men.
But what of the man?
Why his thoughts and the abhorrent images that spring for his mind?
For these valorous deeds are the work of a titan
beyond any of us,
and it should be terrifying to be in his presence.

The man in armor is man no longer.
Now he is a deific expulsion of truth and justice
beyond what we can withstand.

There's no image or idol like the beams of light
he sends to illuminate the world.

Remembering Iason

Let us all remember him
who was a mighty warrior once
who strove for life at every chance
and who was brought down by treachery.
Golden-clad he seemed to me
when we placed him on the pyre
though I know it was my own sweat
and tears reflecting the wasting light.
Not hero-born but hero-blooded
and I wish I could have seen him then
held up by the dead he laid to waste
ennobled by his furious rage
and terrifying to behold.
Remember him to all your enemies
in the sound of your war-cries
and the beating of your hearts.

The Empty Throne

Troglodytes and terrors from the dark
do not haunt and howl so forcefully
as those thoughts of mine which blissfully embark
and target my sanity remorselessly
for he abandons (or Abaddons) his post, the arch-
angel who guards against them sightlessly
and underneath it all, the fall of kings
in their great halls, givers of rings
and dolls and precious things
does hole and harry my heart.

My Rood

Upon their wings they paint the roses
of all yesterday's tea-parties
and all yesterdays beheadings.
When I wake I see them still,
the ironic flowers of war,
ferric in their ferocity,
their cross to bear.
And would that the rood re-transformed
and flowered again
but it is an already-deceased tree cut down to craft the cross.
I saw them cut it yesterday.

All the Thunderous Rage

All the patients in the world could not satisfy these doctors
who poke and prod and have them lie
and steal and cheat and are instrumentalized
by their towering but collapsing intellects,
these epigones,
these eidolons,
these foul cruelties stretched over
and over and over
until taut as drum-skins they beat out the beat
and it pretends sublimity, this thunder,
but does it know it is a thunder of the mind?

Artair's Bears

There they are in full panoply of war,
all of them sons-of-bitches,
dog-men and dog-warriors,
brothers one and all.
Their claws gleam in the noon-bright sun
and their fangs gnash and grind
and their pelts are snow-blown
and wind-wrapped about themselves
for they are but beasts,
alone in the wilderness.

Let them all come, those whoresons
and vagabonds, who like their
namesake bear up the burden of the world.
They are Atlas-ed in their shame
and bow snout down to the earth
to sniffle and grumble at their fate.

Bears, how I adore thee
and wish to be armored in the certitude
of fruitless victory
that you bear so nobly.

Snake Tongues and Bear Thoughts

I with my split-tongued personality
do find it atrociously difficult to speak
in ways that I myself understand,
let alone for all you who are not divided
between the snake tongue and eagle eye and
great ursine paws that rent the earth beneath their claws.
A mighty doom is laid upon him who,
unable to speak straight and mammalian,
must think like a reptile or a hawk
(or worse still an insect, a thoughtless ant, able only
to repeat that most basic of commands)
and I who swear by bear or boar or other beast
do find myself split.

Hiss hiss, caw caw, what interminable noise they make
within my mind, and pay no rents there,
no obligation to feudal lord or longship captain
among even one of them.

Drive Them Into the Sea

Quiet Gildas tells the story
of our swords sharp and reddened with
the blood that must be holy
for it springs from martyrs whose death-gift
is a saintliness that enlivens only
ecclesiastical history
like the venerable Bede's
for we drove the saints into the sea.