Harald Hardradi

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

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

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

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

Two Short Poems about Circles

Enfleshment

With her back
against mine
the word
enlivens
sound.




The Compass

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

Circle Man

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

To Do Not

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

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

Victorus aut Mortus

I submitted a new story to The Black Library's most recent short story contest. Here are the first four paragraphs.

Markus Raben perched on a metallic rack screwed into an exterior wall of a Gothic arch supporting the lowest passenger bay of the Imperium battle-barge, Pequod, cleaning his sniper rifle. He wrinkled his nose at the acrid mix of gun oil, mold, mildew, sweat, backed-up toilets, cigars, and after shave arising from the crowded floor. Bits of rust and dried paint flaked from the ceiling onto his black synthetic blanket, disturbing his sense of order.

Unconsciously, he scratched a fresh tattoo of a raven with its wings extended on his right shoulder, and then rubbed his left hand over three fresh wounds, neatly stitched on his stomach, the remains of the Apothecaries’ latest treatment.

Raben, a Raven Guard neophyte, had not yet been assigned to a scout squad. In the interim, he trained under the iron tutelage of Sergeant Instructor Mannix, who never tired of reminding him he was refuse from the lowest level of Kiavahr and his conversion into a lobotomized servitor was imminent.

Raben knew otherwise. He had measured his fate through the Tarot. After all, hadn’t he had survived fifteen years on a crowded industrial planet by using his wits, his knife, and the hidden psychic powers he had inherited from his mother to become a Raven Guard neophyte?

Repetition

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

An Emerging Theory

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

Snail Silence

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

The Myth of the Snail

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

Life on the Under Leaf

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