MODERN BEOWULF (WORK-IN-PROGRESS)

 

Beowulf came to me in a dream

Bragging about his limousine 

Grendel and mom floating in the lake

Double dragons kill each other, Beowulf’s mistake

I'm back with Beowulf's dragons of mythology

But what led to this embryology?

Grendel and his mom lived through the dis-arming

Dynasty of Cain’s learned to be charming

 

Wake up and decorate with a dip pen and ink

Drawing tarot symbols, my art stinks

But the song I wrote plays on tenor guitar

As I leave Philly to travel not-so-far

 

Between 2 rivers Schuylkill and Delaware

Arrive in East Village’s Tompkins Square

Dave van Ronk shakes my hand and welcomes me

Then begins singing the St James Infirmary

 

Wander into the Cafe Wha

Electric guitars? How bourgeois!

Oh, man, the guitarist is not only hunky

He plays incredible music that is so funky

My great folk career too late to write words acoustically

Name’s Jimi Hendrix, inheriting the seat of Geat musically

 

And then I see Beowulf from my dreams

Talking to three other Penny Poker kings

Hrothgar, Hygelac, and an unknown king of Danes

With the one-armed jack Grendel passing out cocaine

Three tarot queens flirt with the men

Hildeburh, Modthryth, Hygd and then

The Hag! Grendel’s  mother shaggy yet youthful

I wonder if this version is kind or still brutal

 

Walking through the night to my rented room

Anonymous writer seventh century presumed

Did you speak the poem or did you sing?

Did you play the oud or lute or anonymous strings?

Or pound drums while telling of the Scyldings’ Spear Dane

Got lost thinking of Beowulf in the rain

 

Or anonymous was a woman (says Virginia Woolf)

A mother telling her toddlers stories of Beowulf?

Such a good tale picked up and passed around by bards

Maybe she was one of the queens of my tarot cards

     

Will never know….

 

© 2026 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE: Beowulf 7TH CENTURY SUTTON HOO HELMET