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.