I Want a Viking Funeral

When we shake our mortal coil then will we know at last,

What awaits both kings and peasants those treacherous and dull?

Is it hell, or maybe a bird, that is cursed to watch time pass?

For I don’t know but I don’t care for the hope of an endless lull.  

No, I would be disgusted to go out like one of them.

A coward of the crown begging in a noose

And when I sing my weary hymn 

My soul, it shall be loose.   

Yes, I wish for a Viking Funeral, my flame burning on a lake

So load your quiver and ready your bow with tearful eyes upon thy boat

The last farewell, and as families shake, i pray this be my fate

But if it’s not, I pray I never see those gates

The pearly white one’s in others dreams

I will be an intruder, a chance mistake, just slipping through the seams

I admittedly had a lot on my mind while I was drafting this sonnet. The particular themes I wanted to stress concerned both religion and the afterlife. I am really interested in the way that our religious affiliations change the ways we see death. Some don’t believe in death afterlife, some believe we go to heaven, and others—in my opinion most beautifully and cruelly—believe that we have reincarnated into a different creature or even a different person. I wanted to write a sonnet about both the lack of religion that I have in my life as well as my obsession with Viking funerals. Both my parents and I have agreed to hold Viking funerals in the event of a death in the family. It is simply something that is always at the back of my mind when I contemplate death. Additionally, my inclusion of kings, the crown, nooses, and cowards all comes from another class that I’m taking entitled “the persistence of piracy”. We are currently learning about privateers—basically, pirates that are sanctioned by the crown— and a lot of my harshness throughout the poem comes from their ability to do horrible things in the name of a formal government.

 Lastly, I wanted to intersperse different parts of my identity within the piece, particularly with the loading of the bow and arrow, which happens in a Viking funeral but is also symbolic of my almost two-decade-long relationship with archery. Additionally, the intruder line refers to the rest of my extended family’s fanaticism. Both my thought process and my identity is reflected all throughout the sonnet.