The Character Here by Dale Barrigar Williams

(Druid Girl Image, provided by DWB)

The Character Here

The main character in the following lyric cry goes barefoot most of the time, wears animal skins when he wears anything, carries a spear, wears an amulet around his neck that protects from evil spirits which he knows often, but not always, come from other people, and has never shaved, although he has cut off his beard and hair when they get too long so they don’t get in his way; he also takes magic mushrooms, walks for days on a regular basis, hangs around the fire a lot, also spends a lot of time alone, sees visions, makes cave paintings he never looks at again, or sometimes returns to as if to an old friend for days on end; and in this poem, is inventing, or elaborating, human language, while also simultaneously developing the gift of human mercy which Jesus himself, and his mother Mary, would bring to perfection many thousands of years into the future from where this character is perching in this poem – right now.

Alone at Blue Rocks on the Shoreline

Prehistoric Man/kind perches on the cusp of a decision, and speaks.

The rocks here at shoreline are blue.

Blue like the water and sky.

Blue like the blue bird and the big ice.

And they rise half as high as the ice, as the big ice.

The rocks here under this sunset tree are red.

Red like her hair, and the sacrificial hare in the sun, in the trap, twitching.

(LET IT GO.)

Your costume only becomes you

and your uniform once you

wholly own it somehow

after long tries

and once you wholly own it you’ll

uniformly know and your uniform

costume will simply become a way

of knowing and a way of knowing more

about what you already know you know

but aren’t always so sure about, in this land

of the wooly mammoth having you for breakfast

on his horns

and the saber-toothed tiger around

every

bushy

turn.

So the hare, let it go, LET IT GO.

The hare released.

Look at him go!

He flies because I

have chosen

not to sacrifice.

Dr. Dale Williams Barrigar is an impoverished poet-scholar from the Midwestern USA who learned much of what he knows about primordial humankind by reading and pondering the works of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, William Butler Yeats, William Wordsworth, William Blake and William Shakespeare, as well as lots of intuition, imagination, and experience thrown into the balance. Experience alone is never enough, and neither is reading; they have to be combined.

10 thoughts on “The Character Here by Dale Barrigar Williams”

  1. Dale

    Mercy in the Ice Age. The prologue and poem are such a perfect blend that there is no real boundary between them. Locating the act of mercy long before Jesus gives this great depth and shows that hope might be eternal!

    Leila

    Like

    Reply

    • Leila

      Thanks for taking such good care of this work.

      June is a hopeful time in the part of the Planet where I situate myself, so this is a great moment for this work to appear, despite, or because of, everything else that’s currently going on in the world as well.

      I realized that “brevity” can mean a really long sentence, if that sentence (or sentences) covers a lot of ground within it in a succinct way.

      Thanks for your comments which draw out both the form and the meaning of this drama.

      Dale

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  2. chrisja70778e85b8abd's avatar chrisja70778e85b8abd says:

    Hi Dale

    The first thing that struck me was your sentence structure in the opening paragraph. This reminded me of Kafka’s “Up in the Galley.” A smooth flow of energy that comes to the reader without the full stop of a period. Showing a range in your writing. Like singers, with the chops, can go low to high. Which is very cool! Like in A-HA’s “Take On Me.”

    This is an excellent imagining of a prehistoric man! It awakens a yearning to drop the yoke of civilization and return to the earth’s shores.

    “The Character” is full of superstition and human complications and he may not be the apex predatory to come. There is an innocence and freedom, before the hunter/gatherer sets the plow and fence to the earth’s face.

    He has mercy and paints in the caves. He experiments with mushrooms and might be aware of Jesus.

    Great images in the poem. You set the scene well with the “big blue ice.” I see immense glaciers. Where survival isn’t what it is now. He doesn’t worry about organic vs chemically treated food. With…

    “the saber-toothed tiger around

    every

    bushy

    turn.”

    That’s Great!

    (LET IT GO.) Let the hare go. PLEASE is what I hear.
    -A deeper message about life in the here and now.

    Agreed–living and reading… Well done!

    Christopher

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • Hi, Christopher!

      Everything you’ve written here is nothing less than a prose poem about my poetry. You always “get” all the nuances, AND point out new things I’d never thought of before, both of which are awesome.

      The rough draft for the poem part of this was written in 2014 while taking quite a few illegal substances. (The prose part was written recently.) There was a version of this that was like gibberish no one in their right mind would ever have been able to make sense of, me included. The essentials of the character’s voice emerged when everything else fell away much later. So it was like his subconsciousness was speaking for a while. Dangling on the edge of madness while writing.

      Thanks so much for all your commentary! This Sunday is a Drifter column called “The Crowd and the Protest,” a literary report about USA, June 14, 2025 A.D. A literal event also turned into a symbol of modern anxiety and release.

      Dale

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

    • Hi Doug!

      “Having you for breakfast” was meant in the figurative sense of being torn to shreds, not necessarily eaten (hence the line “on his horns”), although I believe the talking cave man was also aware of the new research saying wooly mammoths might have been more omnivorous than previously imagined, especially under certain conditions (like when starving). Also, at the point he says this, he’s speculating on the possibilities, not laying out the facts; but also his language use is probably a little blurry still since he can’t really talk yet (out loud), or not much.

      Thanks for reading and commenting, as always!

      Dale

      Like

      Reply

Leave a comment