Samples
The Falcon's Lament
(From The Falcon's Lament: An Anthology)
It must have been a year ago,
the day I set myself free.
Late October,
deep in the ochre wood,
mellow and austere with peat and heather.
Flaxen sienna, umber logs,
mallow gently swaying
in the wind,
the soft kiss of morning dew.
Petrichor from the previous
night’s rain, where
the sky had wept
for what with daybreak came.
Whether you knew my fate or not,
I did,
or at least
I soon learned.
A sonnet, a eulogy, a hymn
like gilded talons and
presumptuous wind,
both your undoing and your salvation.
You, a Falconer;
me, a caged bird.
And, I, I confess,
was bold enough to rue.
On your arms the small scratches
that I can hear my wingbeats
etching,
I was shrieking and calling,
shrillness from my beak.
Marks too small to harm
but too deep to fade.
But now I have my own,
a matching pair,
What a sight we are!
Downy plumage long gone; bare skin tarnished
because, for once, your caged bird hadn’t obeyed.
When I fly now, not so often,
the wind chills me, for I am stiff:
unused wings are akin to none at all.
Like the fox without its brush,
a lock with no key,
a tree with no leaves,
wings without wind.
My furtive glances at you mirror what I see
in myself.
While I- yes, I! Your faithful falcon, have faltered,
I daresay, I am tired.
I am a falcon, derelict and decrepit,
a bird without flight.
I only hunt my own faults.
For what is left of life when all the rest has gone,
when the sun rises in the West
and sets in the East,
when mountains shake in the wind like leaves,
when the ground quakes and
the moon weeps,
when the Wood burns and
the free bird flies once more.
But until then,
how the mighty have fallen;
how the wings have been shorn.
If I am killed for merely living,
let Death be kinder than Man.
Let the cliffs fall,
and let the rain burn;
let the storm beckon
and never subside.
Let the asphodel shed
and let shadows shine,
let the sun darken
when the rivers dry.
But at least, in the deepest chasms of my mind,
when a bird is free
and is uncaged to fly,
what is dead may never die.
Dragonslayer
(From Dragonslayer: An Anthology)
I walked down the beige-carpeted stairs at the witching hour;
two dragons were roaring in the kitchen.
They flapped their wings and reared their heads,
flame spewing like a sour lunch from their gaping maws.
I stared at their prismatic scales, opulent and holy
like the image I had once stored in my heart and my head.
But crimson gleamed just like these scales
of Maat, which swayed like a pendulum from one to the other.
My wide-eyed grimace could not pierce the shroud of folly and fantasy
so I watched as thorns ensnared them both as they fought to be free
of the other, for in the thistles, there is only room for one
but my foolish imagination had tarried and lagged behind blatant reality
and wondered why two dragons could not exist in harmonic majesty.
The pink one gnashed its teeth and fire sprung forth, fingers bunching eagerly
but it ducked when the cobalt clenched its jaw and struck with heavy talons
and I watched from between the balusters like a prisoner peering from her cage
only to be grateful for its shelter.
Yet I had an escape from this island, a sandbar of stairs
via which I could take flight if I so wished, for, as I seem to have forgotten mentioning
I am a dragon too, once in Locke’s tranquility and now at the border between turbulence and order, and chaos and the fall of a dynasty,
for what is left of a soul when all the rest is stripped away and we rule by instinct,
by dilemma, fear and hate
My island is Goulding’s island, or Stevenson’s–
No, it is merely my own.
Because I need no mutiny or pirates to define the catastrophe of my home
and I would rather watch paint drying than watch the destruction of the only family I know
and the dragons say that no one is to blame
except one another, yet still I recoil in shame
for it feels as though ever since I hatched, they’ve walked on eggshells
and the comfort of the nest has washed away
on a mutinous tide from the tsunami, the storm of grief they’ve stirred
like an overcooked pot roast doomed to keep churning
for a wallowing eternity.
I looked to my escape route for the second time
and saw the lucid beacon like a sconce above my head
yet far above, far out of reach, except to the dead
I padded up the stairs, my plods slow and tired
yet exuberant like lemonade from the stands we no longer cared to run
and the bikes you never taught me to ride
since your dragon war was ever paramount.
The seas still would not part as I forced my way upstairs
out of this fanged, inflamed hell, and evil incarnate.
Arkless, the waters would not split down the middle like my heart
for I was merely a dragon, impure from the start
and no one would spend months animating their change for me
for, as I often realize, my exodus was not worth drawing.
Despite their baleful efforts to pull me back down,
I swam diagonally through the riptide, my arms scalding and burning
like the water streaming from my eyes
and the downturned sclera which would be the dragons’ prize
Yet, no matter the winner, I knew they would share
and I was right, for in the earth I was laid bare
and above me two snouts, both equal and grand
loomed down in grief at their shattered creation damned
to an eternity in solitude
without war in her ears
or her home breaking as easily as glass
before her eyes.
The water I’d parted forcibly receded
and flooded the downstairs like hope deleted
from this plane, this pocket of life
and with sodden wings weighed down by loss
the dragons thrashed, not for the drowning
but for the lost
And their tears pooled in the flood
in the same kitchen where knifelike words had drawn blood
and I had watched from the stairs
as we’d fallen apart.
My last-ditch effort to find the last jigsaw
had taken me far beyond, but had merely been tape–
and not the expensive kind–over the wound;
if anything, the puzzle fragmented
more than it had since I’d been there
and I gazed down to watch from my silent pedestal
as the dragons unraveled like strings or ribbons,
billowing in the wind, affixed on one end between pinched fingers
And floated away to different valleys
like how I’d drifted to the sky.
As above, so below,
I realized with my weathered eye
the dragons had shorn their wings on my final flight
and, though I’d hoped my absence would bring unity
it only hastened hellfire and impunity.
While each tried to join me, the last map was slain
like a lamb at an altar
or a minor grave–
mine was etched with “Dragonslayer”
for that’s what I was and am and will always be,
what all of us are, deep down inside
Dragonslayers and dragons
with fire that heats the furnace and bakes the bread,
scorches fields and braises the dead;
claws that carve a life from barren rock
and tear into others, violence amok;
Carroll warned us to beware the Jabberwock,
teeth that bite, claws that catch
but as I saw that day on the flooded stairs
on the landing between hell and its opposite,
I need not look beyond the threshold of the front door,
for all men can be monsters.