There was, in a splendid cave,
A dragon, as majestic as folklore,
fairytale, and myth
as fair as in religion
And as grand as in a child’s dream.
And it was in a child’s dream
that our dragon lived.
For it was there, it was safe
from the various things that spoil
a child, and a child’s dream.
The dragon would live
In many dreams each night
or day if they napped
As children are wont to do.
And he gave them,
Boundless dreams
That ended
As they woke.
But so beautiful were they,
The dreams, that the young ones
Would yearn to dream soon again.
And do what they could,
Would wake, from their limitlessness.
The dreams were jeweled and high
and gleamed blind eyes
they were colored, prisms
Loud and hard; vital and
real.
Our dragon saw this, and would
smile at his young ones.
There were no old children allowed.
Or rather—would they dream?
And smile, knowing that these faithful
would wake, rise, and leave
Sleeping only to rest,
Resting only to forget
Forgetting their beloved child dragon.
And it was so that our Dragon dreamed
with his young ones. There would always be
The intrepid knight. He would slay dragons,
that is, all dragons except for his beloved Dragon.
and bring their heads to the feet of his
Lady. There would always be Lady,
So maidenly she softened the most
Chaste knight’s heart. Yet her Fair hair would line
with silver. Faintly, and her slender figure would Bend
with child and our knight would behead less
and less
Dragons as his joints became crusty as his armor.
Occasionally, there was an obstinate one,
Who spent too many dreams with Dragon
and he worried, wrought over this
Because it was unnatural. For a child
to dream so, and continually so that
his life was more dream than life
and his visions were more with eyes closed
than open.
He would love them more, this Dragon
because the obstinate ones were so like he
was.
So staunch, and faithful, to the only thing they knew.
Damning everything unknown to never.
Dragon’s dreams were boundless,
In a circle, with no regret, capable
of living again if mistakes killed him the first
few times.
And dragon dreamed
like he had not done in a long time
he dreamed things a child would dream
for things he had longed for always
but knew he could not have,
as a Dragon that dreamed
with young ones forever.
For dragon had no mate
and dragon often wished
to speak of things and dream
of visions with something
other than young ones
who came and left.
There were generations of knights
and maidens, who vowed eternal
fealty, and left to a greater one
when time came.
Dragon had never done so,
and had remained,
and there were infinitesimal spaces
when Dragon wondered if he should not have
followed one particularly beloved child of his
off to the nether reaches of dreamland.
Dragon chose to stay, to help the young ones
dream. There were so few of them now,
they needed him even if they forgot him.
Dragon never forgot
which is why, he was still
with the young ones dreaming.
But the slew of coal black curls
jaunting into the horizon
and golden maidens waving back to him looked the same
because they always left.
~*~~**~~~***~~~~****~~~~~***
She was particularly obstinate.
Dragon knew by the way her eyes
turned to jewels as her lids closed over them
to sleep and the way her breathing came
Heavier and hotter
and the nails almost seem to grow in her dream.
Her skin took on a fine texture barely visible so that
Dragon thought he dreamed it (the formations)
Our damsel was a little different.
She was not as maidenly, nor as golden--
the type that grew into beautiful ladies.
She resisted her maidenly duties
a bit more and sat with our Dragon
in dreams of idylls idling between summer
Haze and autumn glory and
Summer glory and autumn haze.
Damsel would pet her little hand
on Dragon’s nose and tickle him
with her dark curls.
This girl made mistakes, many of them,
the same ones, in greater degrees.
The veins became heavier, tracing her skin
into a pattern of delicate she-scales
and her eyes angled into the sharp points
of sagacity (denied)
of mirth, having seen a lot.
The tip of her tongue split at the tip
and flicked sometimes in her irritation.
Our damsel was somewhat restless
In her dreams. Her eyes would flutter
as if she would wake, but
the fear of sadness kept her dreaming
And Dragon saw this, and saw a shadow
From the side and kept it there.
He could still dream
That was why he never left
and braced his scales against
Damsel’s restlessness
For lately her restlessness
had brought her from the side
of our dragon to the side
of a mild knight, with limpid eyes,
Who saw no further when his eyes
were closed as when they were open.
He was a first-rate knight and kneeled
deeply whenever our damsel appeared.
Damsel’s heart fluttered, as did
her eyes, and she would almost wake
with this melancholy young knight.
But she would see, at the side of her
dreams, her faithful Dragon.
He never changed! And she was restless.
Yet she had oft times sat in solitary
peace, the two of them, laughing at how
the young knights would ride off
with their maidens. And she had said that she
would prefer a dragon any day over the knights.
The dragons were immortal, and damsel
wanted eternity. Damsel did not want to die
with the regret of the dreamless ones.
Dragon saw repetition of this beautiful knight.
He had seen so many others.
Dragon came to damsel
before she had made her inevitable decision.
Perhaps it was not so
inevitable in the land of dreams. Dragon came armed.
He fanned his scales, lifted his head high,
and bowed deeply to damsel:
My obstinate one, when you came here, you said
you would never leave, and I told you
that though you said this,
you would ever be free to wake. You laughed, scoffed me,
and patted my hand. And then you sat beside me while
a generation of young ones came and left for
their mandatory stay here. But now it seems
that you would leave with your knight errant.
And I will allow you with all my heart. But please
allow me first to speak of what I may offer you
if you will stay.
whatever makes you unhappy.
Unhappiness is fleeting in my land.
I offer you a chance
to do anything, many things,
at the same time,
and to see yourself
while you are doing it.
I offer you a chance to imagine things
and spin them right in the air
as you wish them, and then touch them and
hold them until you grow tired and
will them away.
Substance becomes insubstantial
with a whim. I
offer you forever, immortality
of your dreams. A
place to stay
when the rest would not dream. And I offer you
my love, which like the rest here, will never
gleam less brightly or burn less fiery;
it likely will out there, no matter
how real it is now.
And she to he:
My dear dragon. You were ever
my friend when I happily came, and struggled
through existence in our land.
But there is more outside of dreams. I want
these translucent images in my mind
to harden and hold. I want
to place them, delicately, into a room
I’ve designed into a life I have made. And someday,
I will find the dreams again. Only I won’t
be able to dictate them as I did before,
only watch them, not be in them. But I will
be in something else, some space where one
cannot step back.
There are so many dimensions here, that I could
never grasp that one something that I wanted
and when I did,
I would step back, into another space, and it wasn’t
mine anymore.
Even if I am going to the restricted one-way
spaces, at least I won’t
be able to stand back in any way
that would make anything I wanted
and had, less mine. It will be mine, whatever
I find or take, or work for. Here, I don’t have anything!
She looked at his pain, from dreaming or wake? And so:
I do not promise to stay
And do not refuse to go.
And Dragon was sad that she did
not see his heart in her hand. And bowed
down deeply, as he did
when he began in his dreams, not
so much like a dragon, but like the others.
Dragon’s tears came and fell
like a gentle flood
his scales hardened into deep red
And fell like chips of blood
his fiery breath turned mute
Jeweled eyes turned dull agate
Claws grew gaunt
Neck bowed
He laid down gently and closed
his eyes. He bade damsel to open hers.
And when she did, she saw
a long stretching road, with no side roads, stretching
to the distant horizon above them.
Her knight gently laid her
on their steed and slowly, at a pace
where damsel could look back and wave,
steered their steed.
But there was no steering necessary,
there was only one road, and one way
to go. And when damsel passed things
on the road, she was sure that they were
there and that she had passed them.
Damsel sighed, a kind of contented
sigh that she could not deny.
She looked into the muted sun and saw
her reflection. It came back hazy at first,
then distinctly.
Damsel finally knew the difference
between a dream and reality. She was secure.
She knew. She knew
that certain things could
not be anymore, and that was better.
Our dragon saw our damsel
off, thinking that he should not
dream of any more damsels. For the more
obstinate they came, the more
they would want
to go when it was time.
And the time always came, time,
its reality,
was always an ending
to dreams, where time was not allowed.
Dragon wondered
if,
during the time when he could
have rode off into the sun with his damsel, if he should
have. It seemed so real, their contentment, so hardened
that it could not fade.
But even as he wondered, he saw
the hazy lines of Damsel
and her Knight riding certainly into the sun, growing
dimmer as they approached it, and finally
into a speck that the sun’s brightness swallowed.
Dragon knew that the glare of the sun would keep
damsel from finding her way back. Or was it
because she no longer looked back,
for him. Dragon gave a heavy sigh. He closed
his eyes so that he could not see
himself as he was
and began dreaming.
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Haiku
- Nature - Traditional 5-7-5
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Haikus
- Love - Nontraditional 5-7-5
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