by Rocky Wood
For Owen (1985), written for King’s younger son, has a hilarious fantasy quality, and appears in Skeleton Crew. Its only other published appearance is in Rosebud magazine, #27, for Summer 2003. The third, Paranoid: A Chant (1985), a harrowing testimony to madness, also appears in Skeleton Crew.
The following poems were mostly published during or just after King’s college years, yet to date King has not included any of them in his collections. Perhaps he has been concerned with the unevenness of the work or considers them too strong a juxtaposition to his prose.
However, there have recently been signs of King’s softening in this matter, with his agreement allowing six to be republished in Cemetery Dance’s spectacular dark horror poetry collection, The Devil’s Wine (2004), edited by the fine writer, Tom Piccirilli. Although Piccirilli requested all eight poems known at the time (Dino was not ‘discovered’ until March 2004) it is unclear why King chose not to allow the republication of the two from Contraband, Woman with Child and an untitled poem beginning with the line, ‘She has gone to sleep while …’
In 2009 King again began to publish poetry – Mostly Old Men and The Bone Church (2009), and Tommy (2010). And, as discussed later, King also kindly agreed to allow Dino to be reproduced in this book.
Harrison State Park ’68 (1968)
In this America Under Siege poem the narrator describes a mixed bag of images, including a little girl dead on a hopscotch grid and a cow’s skeleton in Death Valley. Harrison State Park ’68 first appeared in the University of Maine literary magazine, Ubris, for Fall 1968. Its only subsequent publication is in The Devil’s Wine, which is the easiest access point for readers. It is also possible to photocopy the original Ubris at the Raymond H. Fogler Library of the University of Maine at Orono.
The poem, the first of King’s to be published, is headed by two quotes. “All mental disorders are simply detective strategies for handling difficult life situations” (Thomas Szasz); “And I feel like homemade shit” (Ed Sanders). Harrison State Park itself is also mentioned in Rage. In that Bachman novel, Charles Decker took a girl called Annmarie there.
The verse about the dead little girl (a recurring theme in King’s prose in such works as The Dead Zone, The Huffman Story and The Green Mile) reads:
We have not spilt the blood/ They have spilt the blood/ A little girl lies dead/ On the hopscotch grid/ No matter/ – Can you do it?/ She asked shrewdly/ With her Playtex living bra/ cuddling breasts/ softer than a handful of wet Fig Newtons./ Old enough to bleed/ Old enough to slaughter/ The old farmer said/ And grinned at the white/ Haystack sky/ With sweaty teeth.
A possible portent of The Stand appears in one verse, “and someone said/ – Someday there will be skeletons/ on the median strip of the Hollywood Freeway.”
There are strong sexual overtones in this poem, perhaps not surprising for a poet around his 21st birthday. It opens, “– Can you do it?/ She asked shrewdly/ from the grass where her nylon legs/ in gartered splendor/ made motions.” Later there is mention of “Over a dozen condoms/ in a quiet box” and “call me Ishmael/ I am semen.”
This work bears re-reading and is complex in its themes and tone, taking us for the first, but far from the last, time into the realm of murderous insanity. In retrospect it is one of his best poems, clearly part of the King canon and another signpost in the early development of the best-selling writer.
The Dark Man (1969)
This poem was first published in the University of Maine literary publication Ubris for Fall 1969 and was reprinted without changes in a small magazine, Moth, in 1970 (in both publications the poem is credited to him as “Steve King”), along with two other King poems. Its next publication was not until The Devil’s Wine, nearly three and a half decades later, in 2004. This may be explained by the fact that this poem serves as the basis for one of King’s most significant characters, Randall Flagg, the anti-hero of The Stand and a key opponent for Roland in The Dark Tower cycle. As King reached the end of that cycle and began to consider future directions in his writing might he have reached a decision to “release” this poem from its close confinement?
The figure of a/the Dark Man has consumed King and his writings from the time this poem was penned (and possibly even earlier); and the whole concept of the Dark versus the White lies at the moral core of all King’s work. It is therefore impossible to overstate its importance. Any reader serious about King and understanding his motivations, and that of his characters, has an obligation to read and study this poem. Its easiest access point is now The Devil’s Wine but the original Ubris may be photocopied at the Raymond H. Fogler Library at the University of Maine in Orono. Alternately, copies of Ubris come to market rarely, commanding prices of up to $1000.
In an interview with Waldenbooks in July 2003 King had this to say:
Actually, Flagg came to me when I wrote a poem called “The Dark Man” when I was a junior or senior in college. It came to me out of nowhere, this guy in cowboy boots who moved around on the roads, mostly hitchhiking at night, always wore jeans and a denim jacket. I wrote this poem, and it was basically a page long. I was in the college restaurant …. I wrote the poem on the back of a placemat. It was published, as a matter of fact, but that guy never left my mind.
With this confirmation, the poem is linked directly to Flagg’s appearances in all versions of The Stand, both versions of Eyes of the Dragon and The Dark Tower cycle. Appropriately, no timelines are given for in the poem, which is an America Under Siege work.
Both in its original reading and in retrospect The Dark Man is stunning. In only five verses King manages to deliver a horrific spectral being, fully formed to prey on our subconscious. The poem is headed by a quote from T. S. Eliot, “Let us go, then, you and I …” It is filled with lines of great beauty and horror: “…and over it all a savage sickle moon that bummed my eyes with bones of light …” and “…where witch fire clung in sunken psycho spheres of baptism…”
The poem ends coldly, with a verse fit for a Flagg: “…and in the sudden flash of hate and lonely/ cold as the center of a sun/ i forced a girl in a field of wheat/ and left her sprawled with the virgin bread/ a savage sacrifice/ and a sign to those who creep in/ fixed ways:/ i am a dark man.” (Note that the “”” is in lower case in the poem. Indeed, there is no capitalization whatsoever in the body of the work.)
Donovan’s Brain (1970)
The original appearance of this 12-line King poem was in Moth magazine in 1970. Its next publication was not until The Devil’s Wine, the easiest access point for readers. It as an America Under Siege work.
In this 104 word, 24-line poem the reader receives mixed images of Shratt, his woman and an electric tank, more of which below.
Frankly, this is not one of King’s better or more accessible poems, at least at first reading. Michael Collings says this89, “Based on Curt Siodmak’s novel and the subsequent film of the same name, the poem focuses on Shratt, the victim of a pseudo-science that transmutes into horror.” That novel, also titled Donovan’s Brain, was published in 1942. It spawned two successful movies, The Lady and the Monster (1944), starring Erich von Stroheim and Donovan’s Brain (1953).
King writes extensively about both the novel and the films in Danse Macabre90. There he tells us (in part):
Horror fiction doesn’t necessarily have to be nonscientific. Curt Siodmak’s novel Donovan’s Brain moves from a scientific basis to outright horror (as did Alien). Both the novel and the films focus on a scientist who, if not quite mad, is certainly operating at the far borders of rationality. This scientist has been experimenting with a technique designed to keep the brain alive after the body has died – specifically, in a tank filled with an electrically charged saline solution. In the course of the novel, the plane of W D Donovan, a rich and domineering millionaire, crashes near the scientist’s desert lab. Recognizing the knock of opportunity, the scientist removes the dying millionaire’s skull and pops Donovan’s brain into his tank.
The operation is a
success. The brain is alive and possibly even thinking in its tank. The scientist begins to try to contact the brain by means of telepathy … and succeeds. In a half-trance, he writes the name W D Donovan three or four times on a scrap of paper, and comparison shows that his signature is interchangeable with that of the millionaire. (“he signed checks with Donovan’s name,” the poem tells us).
In its tank, Donovan’s brain begins to change and mutate. It grows stronger, more able to dominate our young hero. He begins to do Donovan’s bidding, revolving around Donovan’s psychopathic determination to make sure the right person inherits his fortune. The scientist begins to experience the frailties of Donovan’s physical body … low back pain, a decided limp (the poem again: “Shratt came on limping” and “…there was a drag of pain/ in his left/ kidney”). As the story builds to its climax, Donovan tries to use the scientist to run down a little girl who stands in the way of his implacable, monstrous will (the poem tells us: “he tried to run down a little girl”).
King concludes his dissertation in Danse Macabre by saying,
Siodmak is a fine thinker and an okay writer. The flow of his speculative ideas in Donovan’s Brain is as exciting as the flow of ideas in a novel by Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke, or my personal favorite in the field, the late John Wyndham. But none of these esteemed gentlemen has ever written a novel quite like Donovan’s Brain … in fact, no one has. For all its scientific trappings, Donovan’s Brain is as much a horror story as M. R. James” “Casting the Runes” or H.P. Lovecraft’s nominal science fiction tale, “The Colour Out of Space.”
Clearly this novel, and most likely the 1953 film, had a strong impact on King – strong enough to deliver a poem at the end of his college career, and a loving analysis of the book and films in his non-fiction work about horror. For this reason, this fairly inaccessible poem must be considered of import to the King canon.
Silence (1970)
The original appearance of this 12-line King poem was in also Moth magazine in 1970. Its next publication was not until The Devil’s Wine, again the easiest access point for readers. It is an America Under Siege work. In it the narrator hears nothing except the fridge and stands waiting, with “book in hand,” for the furnace to kick on.
Typically of King, horror is close at hand with the two single word lines, “murder/ lurks” and the line, “the feary silence of fury.” Tyson Blue91 says the poem “…is not as accessible as some of the other King poems, and has more in common with haiku, which tries to evoke within its rigidly-structured form the feeling of an event rather than a narrative of something which happened.”
Woman with Child (1971)
Woman with Child was first published in a magazine, Contraband, #1 for 31 October 1971 (Halloween). The 17-line poem has never been republished. The best chance for readers to access it is to acquire a photocopy at the Raymond H. Fogler Library of the University of Maine at Orono, from the original magazine. Interestingly, King did not allow this poem to be reprinted along with six other poems from the 1960s and 1970s he did allow to be included in The Devil’s Wine.
This poem, the most mainstream of his works in this form, is impossible to define as part of a particular “Reality.”
In it a pregnant woman gets out of the bath and feels her unborn child moving. The imagery in this poem is vivid, “…her groping/ fingers find the yellow bathsoap beneath one/ elephantine thigh …” and concludes, “In the dark depths of her the creature turns silently,/ as if toward the surface,/ or the sun.”
This is a poem without horror or undertones, simply a mainstream reflection of a moment in time in a pregnant woman’s daily life. There were actually two King poems in this publication, as discussed in the following section.
Untitled (She Has Gone to Sleep While …) (1971)
King had a second poem in Contraband, #1 for 31 October 1971. Untitled, it begins with the line, “She has gone to sleep while …”
The 28-line poem has never been republished. Again, the best chance for readers to access it is to acquire a photocopy at the Raymond H. Fogler Library of the University of Maine at Orono, from the original magazine. This is the second of the poems known to exist at the time that King did not allow to be reprinted with the six other poems from the 1960s and 1970s that he did allow to be re-published in The Devil’s Wine.
In the poem, which is part of the America Under Siege Reality, the narrator drives his car while a female we assume is his wife, sleeps. He thinks about what his life will become, as he grows older. In one interesting point the narrator thinks of his inner thoughts as “the Library of Me.” This could just as easily describe Gary Jones’ mind in Dreamcatcher.
This is another poem without horror or undertones, simply a mainstream reflection.
The Hardcase Speaks (1971)
The Hardcase Speaks was first published in a magazine, Contraband, #2 for 1 December 1971, with the credit erroneously given as ‘Stephan King’. The magazine also carried a poem about vampires by King’s wife, Tabitha and another by mentor Burton Hatlen. Only 66 lines long, it is written in the slightly delirious style of the late 1960s hippie generation, of which King was, of course, a part (see Tommy later in this chapter). It is an America Under Siege work.
Its next publication was not until The Devil’s Wine, nearly three and a half decades later in 2004 and this is now its easiest access point for readers. The original Contraband may also be photocopied at the Raymond H. Fogler Library at the University of Maine in Orono.
There are a number of interesting signposts in this poem. For instance, King uses a terminology that also appeared in The Dark Man. Here we read, “punctuated by the sodium lightness glare of freights/ rising past hobo cinder gantries and pitless bramble hollows:” In the earlier poem he wrote, “i have ridden rails/ and burned sterno in the/ gantry silence of hobo jungles;”
Early in the poem “Harlow” is mentioned. Harlow is a key location in a number of King stories: It Grows on You (the Marshroots / Weird Tales and Whispers versions), Movie Show and Riding the Bullet. It has a considerable role in both Blaze and The Body and is mentioned in Bag of Bones, The Dark Half, Gerald’s Game, Nona (the Skeleton Crew version), Rage, Under the Dome and Uncle Otto’s Truck (the Skeleton Crew version).
King refers to a serial murderer (a favorite in his prose):
in 1954 in a back alley behind a bar they/ found a lady cut in four pieces and written in her juice on the bricks above/ he had scrawled PLEASE STOP ME BEFORE I KILL AGAIN in letters that leaned and/ draggled so they called him The Cleveland Torso Murderer and never caught him,
And this, “Real life is in the back row of a 2nd run movie house in Utica, have you been there.” King has famously declared to the inane repeat questioning of lazy reporters and interviewers wanting to know where he gets his ideas that he buys them in a small shop in Utica. King’s fascination for Charles Starkweather, who killed ten people in 1958, recurs with: “bore a little hole in your head sez I insert a candle/ light a light for Charlie Starkweather and let/ your little light shine shine shine.” This line also reminds readers of the pencil-probing exercise in The Revelations of ‘Becka Paulson section of The Tommyknockers. Flagg also refers to his relationship with Starkweather in The Stand.
One spectacular two line verse reads with King’s visceral power, ”in huge and ancient Buicks sperm grows on seatcovers/ and flows upstream toward the sound of Chuck Berry.”
After a series of strange observations (“The liberals have shit themselves and produced a satchel-load of smelly numbers”) and instructions (‘eat sno-cones and read Lois Lane’) the poem ends with this: “Go now. I think you are ready.” Manic, yet slightly disappointing, this poem is however clearly King – using trademarks, famous people and gruesome themes.
In the Key-Chords of Dawn (1971)
This 18-line poem was published without a title in a literary magazine, Onan, in 1971 and would be King’s last published poem for fourteen years. Here it is referred to in the manner it is
often described in the King community, In the Key-Chords of Dawn, for the convenience of readers. Piccirilli also lists it under the title In the Key-Chords of Dawn… This work, which was almost impossible to access before the publication of The Devil’s Wine in 2004, cannot be classified in a particular Reality.
In it two people fishing realize that the pastime involves more than just eating the fish and it, like life, contains other responsibilities and complexities.
The poem opens with, “In the key-chords of dawn/ all waters are depthless.” Philosophical in tone, we read in the second of the three verses that, “when we say ‘love is responsibility’;/ our poles are adrift in a sea of compliments.” And in the third: “…so we are/ forced to say ’fishing is responsibility’/ and put away our poles.”
In his The Annotated Guide to Stephen King, Michael Collings interprets the fishing as a metaphor for love.
Dino (1994)
