BEHIND THE MEAD HALL 

“like emanations from 
some fissure in the 
bedrock of the human 
capacity to endure”
—Seamus Heaney
__________________

Alone with his longing, going down—

on the local young drunks peeing in

the back of the King’s local pub

Haunting the local mead halls—

looking for a young Beowulf stud

erect like the Stonehenge ruins

_____________

Nothing can help not even—

J. R. R. Tolkien or Seamus Heaney

or bamboozling Ted Hughes

It’s the misery endured by any—

man who’s fallen in love with a

teenage Viking’s Grendel schwanz

________________

Night after night he cruises—

having no interest in living thru

another stupid boring epic

The guys behind the mead hall—

louche young lounge lizards 

let him grovel for Grendel