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Whimsical Words and Dramatic Affairs

Page 7

by K. J. Joyner


  ***

  Note: I really do miss my pen.

  Ode To An Anime Dude

  Oh! White-haired fuzzy guy, traveling the land,

  Accompanied by green toadie, staff in hand,

  From whence do you come, or where do you go?

  No! Do not speak, ferocious mutt! I’d rather not know.

  Sidhe

  They are beautiful,

  With their fair faces,

  Their flashing eyes full

  Of faraway places.

  Their songs are the mist.

  Their tears are the sun.

  Their riddles can twist

  As a deer on the run.

  Neither from near

  Nor from the far,

  Not even wise seers

  Will tell what is said.

  If I hear them sing,

  I will tell no soul.

  That secret is a thing

  More priceless than gold.

  Two-Dimensional Flats

  They steal away my sanity

  And refuse to give it back.

  They bruise my lost fidelity

  And wear it like a hat.

  They don't know what they do to me

  But I don't care about that,

  For I look a them and all I see

  Are two-dimensional flats.

  Chimes

  Wind chimes

  Chime never the same.

  The wind and the rain,

  Chemical reactions—

  The notes are a fraction

  Different from the last.

  The Middle

  All the Watchers have become psychiatrists.

  The Elves work machines.

  Fairies fly airplanes,

  But I'm stuck in between.

  Yes, here I am in the middle;

  No place to find myself fit.

  Maybe I'll buy a straight jacket

  To see if you fit into it.

  The mermaids are boat artists.

  The trolls all work underground.

  Angels fill clergy positions,

  But I have no job to be found.

  Yes, here I am in the middle;

  No place for me to call home.

  Maybe I'll buy an old van;

  Across the mountains I'll roam.

  Yes, sir, I'm suck in the middle;.

  My voice unknown to the stars,

  No jobs to fill my instincts,

  And no money to get very far.

  Yes, here I am in the middle;

  No place to find myself fit.

  Maybe I'll give to you my straight jacket.

  I'm sure you'll look fine in it!

  Sweet Vision Daunt The Cleaning Lady

  Take seven goblets of clear water and charge them

  Moonlight silver with your essence they gleam

  So you drink your own might

  To make right the things that went wrong.

  Seven paths and seven lights and seven wheels turning

  Through bloody red passages fraught with peace

  So you head toward the light

  To make wild what went stagnate

  Heal the wound, help the child, kill the old man

  The stars gleam with your secrets;

  You hear yourself calling

  The darkness above you is endless with your visions

  This prophecy is churning wild wings spread wide

  Someone will fly away soon.

  Drummer

  Your soul is a red-brown song

  And your body loudly speaks,

  Expressing the heartbeat of your life;

  Lifting your voice and crying out

  As the shadows move around you,

  Jumping, swaying as the beat commands.

  They cannot cage such freedom

  For your spirit is forever free,

  Telling us of love, laughter and praise,

  Giving us to ourselves, the shadows,

  Circling around your clarity,

  Dancing to the heartbeat

  In the rainbow haze of your eyes.

  A Wistful Spirit

  The eerie darkness forebodingly looms

  Within the confines of the empty room.

  The black sense scatters from the air.

  A light footstep; No one is there.

  A wavering shadow in the late sunlight,

  An ancient bear to help the child sleep tight,

  The dust of ages settled thick through the years,

  Eternally stained with the paths of many tears.

  Faded memories sinking in the dusk,

  A wasted spirit who has had enough.

  A scrape on the floor, she dances away

  And she watches you with eyes of gray.

  You glance up from your seat by the door,

  And wonder what you are searching for.

  Looking away, from the corner of your eye,

  You see her there. You hear her cry.

  Forbidden from the realm of men,

  She wishes to know love once again.

  Her name is gone. Only she knows herself.

  Is it right to lay their thoughts on a dusty shelf?

  Unicorn

  Her sad eyes are not very bold.

  Their colors are not gaudy gold.

  Shyness lurks down deep within

  Of eyes untamed by foolish men.

  Delicately wrought, delicately spun,

  She's been captured, but never won.

  If legends are those that speak the truth,

  Then is she the essence of maidenly youth?

  America

  The People looked on the sunlit plains

  And said, "We are."

  They followed the patterns of the winds and rains

  And lived beneath the stars.

  Then the land died in a bath of pain

  Politicians became the lords.

  But the politicians can't erase the red stains

  Nor sheath their fighting swords.

  Red

  Educated, my heart still beats

  The beat of drums, even in the streets

  Of the city.

  My feet are bare, a defiant style

  Of things my people kept all the while

  In the system.

  I hunt, but now with a modern gun

  But still know I to lift my feet to run

  Through the forest.

  I live, a new version of the olden kind,

  Keeping the ways alive in my mind

  For my children.

  Cottoncandy

  Two lovers walking by the waves:

  The wind goading the waves to rise:

  Sea foam scattered on the sand:

  Full moon illuminating a romantic sky:

  He pulls her close, kisses her brow.

  "I love you," needs not be said.

  The foam, cotton candy gone beneath their steps.

  Just for a kiss her eyes appear to beg.

  Like cotton candy, the kiss is sweet

  And gone, save for a taste.

  Like their night spent by the waves,

  Cotton candy memory of dreams in chaste.

  Girl And Dragon

  Darkness was heavy when she stepped into the trees,

  Bravely walking despite the shake in her knees;

  Come to kill a dragon, a beast of scales and blood.

  “A job for a woman,” she said, “for no one else would.”

  She hitched up her backpack, adjusted her jeans,

  Stepped over streams toward the ravine

  Until she came to the cave where the dragon slept,

  And at the open mouth stealthily knelt.

  Inside the damp, the lumbering beast snored,

  Sometimes twitching as in dreams he roared.

  One eye slitted open, spied the girl by his door,

  Yawned and stretched, scattering gold across the floor.

  “You have come to kill me,” stated the wicked beast.

  S
he replied, “I have come to try at the very least.”

  “I have claws, fire and a breast of cold steel.”

  “I have youth, cunning and my strength of will.”

  Their first battle was joined with screams of rage.

  The darkness lifted outside as the drama played,

  And the old dragon tired, the girl as well.

  They slumbered together, entwined, where they fell.

  She was not afraid, not even when she woke

  With the beast asleep, snout close to her throat.

  For she knew a secret passed to her from old.

  She would slay the beast . . . with rock and roll.

  From her backpack, stashed outside in a tree,

  She got her tape deck, set volume to one hundred three.

  Blackless Law thundered through the air

  The girl yawned, unpacking her lounge chair.

  Excalibur

  It gleamed cruelly in the waning light,

  Where it had been thrown in the recent fight.

  Two men, dead, in the grass they lay.

  The sun warmed it at the dawn of day.

  Merlin came, wisely picked it up.

  With it he found the Golden Cup.

  Gave it to The lady, for the future king.

  Only for him would it sing.

  Treachery of marriage forged the king.

  It knew that it would soon sing.

  On a black morning, a newborn cried.

  Blood ran free, an old king died.

  Merlin came, he took the babe,

  Held it, and then gave it a name.

  A sword was driven into a stone, deep.

  Water, from the crack, silently did seep.

  The babe became a fine, young lad.

  Unknowing of the birthrite he had.

  He touched the sword while beneath a hood

  Merlin watched from where he stood.

  The boy held the Stone Sword high,

  Feeling and hearing each worshipful cry.

  Merlin stepped forth and moved his wrist.

  The Stone Sword dissolved into Mystic Mist.

  Beallakine

  Hear the beat as she gracefully dances.

  Her feet are adorned with tinkling bells

  That gleam and chime solemnly;

  A scene shared by the others.

  She smiles, her brown eyes glance

  At him while she whirls quicker.

  "Chime, chime," the bells say in harmony.

  "I am mine. Dance with me forever.

  I'll show you secrets you can keep.

  I'll steal regrets so you will have none."

  This is the song she whispers quietly,

  But before long the beat, beat ends.

  Now she stands in place, exhausted.

  In folded hands, she clasps your last dream.

  Empty Arms

  The sluagh rides, splashing in frothy water.

  The hounds scatter, howling their pain...

  And the sidhe, tall flame-haired mother

  Shelters a boy child, with her cloak, from the rain.

  To the wood, past the moss, the horses stumble

  And through to the other side of the glen...

  There, a host of her servants stand waiting.

  The Sidhe are victorious, another hunt ends.

  A noisy child, screams loud for his mother

  The flame-haired sidhe can not soothe his cries...

  Shaman and sprite are hard put to please her

  With charm and incantations from noon to sunrise.

  Time is no matter where the moon glows golden.

  The sidhe mother sits cold on her throne...

  Memories haunt her with pebble-bright eyes,

  Her own son from the past, gone to dust and bone.

  Quietly she gathers the child to her breast.

  A horse! She rides, careful path in the fern...

  To the house, the child is hugged by the woman

  And Flame-hair disappears with the day’s new turn.

  We come, the hounds cry, desperate to please her,

  On days when the sluagh remounts for to ride.

  Woman finds gifts on her hearth in the morning.

  Hounds bay, come away, sluagh rides away with the tide.

  Fey Day

  Silver beads on the green

  Trickle, slide, falls down

  Absorbed by the thirsty brown

  Left a moist sheen where it ran.

  Faeryland, Good Morning.

  Shimmering vines gleaming soft

  Round globe looking down

  Tiny beings join the dance

  to entrance. A ring of shrooms

  For the dark-eyed bride.

  Faeryland, Good Day.

  Steps in grass by the buckskin beast

  The gentle folks gather for the feast

  Whisper as we enjoy a sweet tune

  Firey globe stretches

  The meal ends.

  Faeryland, Good Night.

  Marbles

  The marbles were inside a large, orange cup;

  Red, white, and blue with

  Green and yellow, too.

  Shaken, the marbles clicked together,

  Making a comforting sound:

  A sound that rattled against my ears

  And make my think of galloping horses

  While Grandma told me

  About Kentucky, her land.

  Then, we'd take the marbles out

  And play a game.

 

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