Berserker

Dan Williams

Interrogating the air around his adversary’s nest,

showing abilities one does not casually confess

to him, beastly is more, humanity is less.

Amazing transformations begin and end,

reason and disbelief fail the test.

 

As the night watches, the man with glazed over eyes transmutes,

pushing ahead of him his ancestors’ stone.

Once fiercely compliant, almost alone, circling old age;

now prowlers and ruffians prefer to stay away,

they believe the night watchman has the Rage;

 

 Though skinned by betrayal, half deaf, showing bone,

 if he bites his tongue and tastes the blood, the Rage will come.

 Beelzebub follows in the Berserker’s tread,

 twenty or more by the end of it dead, and for penance

 for weeks he must be motionless, emotionless, alone.

 

Reading about this precisionless violence, identical in too many ways

to easily take for fable, or dismiss as from a long gone age,

you feel the Field compress around you, almost certain

to leave you very much different than it found you.

Aware of this, you end up facing front on this sideways page.

 

Away from the protection of not caring one bit if you die,

back where the rage will not submit to purge,

where trying to explain why one will, one will not

fall in to the anger where brilliant and crazy merge,

where our friend the Berserker calls home.

  • Author: Dan Williams (Offline Offline)
  • Published: September 28th, 2024 00:23
  • Comment from author about the poem: Reading about the phenomena of the berserker has always intrigued me. So many interpretations I figure some of it must be true.
  • Category: Unclassified
  • Views: 18
  • Users favorite of this poem: sorenbarrett
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Comments +

Comments2

  • sorenbarrett

    In depth into the mind of a berserker. Savage, determined, devoted, naked and sometimes drugged. Warrior of the north. Valhalla I say.

    • Dan Williams

      What a fun bunch of guys these were, the original tough customers. One story has one getting an arm torn off; he picks it up and uses it like a club. Fable, yes, but some truth in these stories. They get a whole chapter in the book I will never finish. Thanks to you as usual.

    • Thad Wilk

      👍👍
      A captivating, deep,
      dark and mesmerizing
      Berserker interpretation!! ,,😱
      Terror-ific read
      deserves a standing ovation! 👏
      Thank for sharing my friend!
      Best regards ✌️. Thad



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