I'm An Animal

Is that you, Bosco? Good boy!

Mission

On a dead planet with nine moons
I said,
This cannot stand.
This will never do.
He said,
Is it the constant storms?
Is it the greenless wastes where nothing ever grew?
I said no dear,
Not that, dear...
It's you.

Nine moons around my head
Nine pentagrams around my bed
Can't watch or pray
The devil away
Because,
Because,
I keep her close and my hatred fed.

The lightning flashes and strikes at last
And all this sand is turned to glass--
It cuts me
And splits me
Now I think
It may be

That there are ten of me
Or ten thousand,
Ten million,
And each with its own little coal black heart--
Never to forgive you.
Never to part.

_______

for One Shoot Sunday

Joan Of Arc (Maid of Orleans)

In 2006, when I had just started writing again, my girlfriend at the time made me sit down on a weekend evening much like this one, and listen to a song (she had made sure) I had never heard before. She said, that's you, you're Joan.

Sometimes when i feel down, I still like to listen to it. I like knowing that somebody thought I was Joan.

The Canadian Space Program

The Canadian Space Program languishes.

They can barely coax a four seater as far as Yellowknife, let alone launch a space station.

All Canadians drag a heavy anchor of shame behind them, because of this.



Imagine if Ottawa established a vibrant new agency, and Canadians pushed towards the stars!

Imagine handsome strong men and beautiful capable women dressed in uniforms which honor the fabled Leafs and Habs with their blue and red colors!

Imagine transmissions coming in from amazing new worlds, in both English and French, eh?

Sure, no one would have any idea what those excitable French were saying, but so what?

Alors! Allons nous!



Some chick and her cats are launched towards Mars.

They travel at umpty billion kilometers per hour, but it feels to them as if they are floating like dandelion fuzz.

Canadians pour into the streets, cheering.

In an access of enthusiasm, they take Detroit and Buffalo, and launch them into space as well.

Soon there are Timbits on the moon.

Can anything stop the Canadians?



It is discovered that the dust of the lunar surface is just like snow.

The 2018 Winter Games are awarded to the moon, under the auspices of Canada!

Drunken lumberjacks shout and pummel each other in a spontaneous expression of joy and national pride.

Winnipeg, gloriously inspired, brings the Stanley Cup home to Canada, and they don't even have a team!

All across the north, it is a new day.



From space, the chick and her cats broadcast on Christmas Day.

"In-fucking-credible!" she reports, and the news media repeats these now famous words endlessly.

It's better than a visit from the old-ass Queen of England any day.

This could be your legacy, Canadians!

Up! To work!

To the very heavens!

We have lift-off!!!

Oh hell yeah.

________

Travel Facts

• In Mexico, men who do not bathe frequently enough are made to marry coyotes, unless of course the coyote objects, in which case the wedding is off.
• In Peru, it is thought that storing dice inside a chili pepper for 24 hours heats them up.
• In Russia, sunlight is such a rare commodity that tiny slivers can be traded for caviar, vodka, or genuine sable coats.
• In Oklahoma, the women are known for being spirited but difficult, and have been known to inflict injury with expertly-wielded family bibles.
• The English are prone to constipation. 
• In India, tigers often kidnap beautiful princesses, and never bring them back. Years later, amazing striped women walk into the villages, claiming to be the daughters of these princesses. It is considered unwise to contradict them.
• In Michigan, there are no wolverines left, but if there were, they would be able to speak perfect French, having been taught by missionaries.
• The Japanese burn with shame for the hideous secrets they keep about the shocking things they have done.
• Scandinavians enjoy "ee haw" music.
• Hungarian gypsies are able to turn ordinary crows into musical notes. When the crows fly, the gypsies dance. 
• Australians cannot make themselves understood without bulky and impractical alphabet boards which they wear like vests and use for creating subtitles. They are always losing the R's.
• Masai tribesmen enjoy puppet theater.
• In Canada, space travel remains a pipe dream.
• In the Philippines, "Star Trek" reruns are dubbed in Tagolog, the local language. 
• Miami is the birthplace of both disco music and neo-cubist art.
• Only a couple of these things are actually true.

for Magpie 50  

Dig

I kept fire wrapped in folded paper
Inside a little brown envelope
Closed with a string clasp
Hidden in my skirts.

When I got a fever
It escaped
And I went red
Then yellow
Then black
From west to east across my skin
Like prairie in love with the lightning.

What's the matter?
Why don't you come to me anymore?
I can write more poems,
Hang the verses from my bones,
And you can find how I used to feel--
But you'll have to sully your
Sweet
White
Hands
Sifting with your fingers through my ashes.

_________

for Thursday Think Tank #33

photo by Metin Demiralay

No, You Can't Have My Stuff

FB is under the weather.   

Storm Science

She is dark.

She is hidden.

She has a million sisters but is unique to her last ion.



I wake and listen.



She could care.

She is moon-ruled.

She could show herself a million places but has chosen my desire.



I open the window and breathe.



She sends out a charge.

I send one back.

It has been done a million times but this one shocks my heart and shivers my bones.



We could open the door,

But we kick it down.

I run into the night, first laughing, then urgent as I open myself, waiting;



She blows through me and I lift,

Burning,

Into the storm.

_________

photo by Metin Demiralay

New York Tendaberry

When I was in high school, I discovered "New York Tendaberry" by Laura Nyro. It remains my favorite album ever. This is the last song on it. I heard the passion and the poetry she created and knew that's what I wanted to do, and be.

I had never heard anything like her, and still haven't. When I heard this song the first time, I cried. When I heard this song just now, I cried. She made me want to be a passionate original who could turn the world around her into amazing art. The place shown in the opening? I wanted to live there. I wanted to be Laura Nyro. Well, I'm me, and that's turned out all right, I think.

Enjoy.

Fin De Siecle

Sigmund Freud visits the local tribal casino,

Sits down,

And in his heavy Austrian accent, says,

"Hit me."



Vladimir Lenin, colorless and severe, agitates to have the pot collectivized,

And is thrown out by bouncers.

He makes his way through the strange city,

Boards a train, then transfers to a steamship,

Finally going into exile in Paris.



Consider:

Why does the sight of the ace of spades make certain of the dancers go upstairs together,

Undress,

And fall into whispered discussion of each other's dreams?

Why does the queen of hearts induce silly laughter

And drunken tears?

Why does the nine of diamonds

Cause sudden grim departure,

Isolation,

Suicide?



A former football star and an expensive prostitute are tableside,having a tractor-pull.

As long as she holds him between her fingers like that,

He will burn.

He is confident enough to wear a pink shirt;

Is he a communist?

He certainly dreams of annexing her,

Controlling her media,

Installing a puppet government.



Through all of this,

Sigmund Freud has been losing his shirt.

He is quietly terrified.

The chips have become imagoes,

The dealer a devouring vagina.

He stands up,

Mops his brow,

Trembles.

Oh, Sigmund,

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar;

But sometimes,

It is a baton passed from careless fingers

Into doom.



At a little cafe near the Seine,

Something unusual happens at that very moment--

Lenin sets down his cup,

Dabs his lips with a napkin,

Leans back,

And laughs like a schoolgirl.

The ace of spades is folded inside his bill,

And he cannot control himself,

Cannot, for the life of him,

Stop.

_______

for One Shoot Sunday

Indian Days

What burns grows back.

The sky is always in motion.

Don't kiss the one with the wind in her blood.

Don't become devoted to her skin.



Watch the way she handles an egg.

Does she warm it first in her hand, as if it might surrender a sigh

Or a peacock?

When she kisses it beyond all saving

Against the rim of a pretty kiln-fired bowl,

Does she coax or crush?

Does it matter to the broken shell?



Still, if you kiss the one with pilfered turquoise on every finger,

If you become devoted to her scent, her deep Indian eyes, her hair--

Remember that bones can birth a second, more careful heart,

What burns grows back,

And the sky is always in motion.

_________

photograph by Metin Demiralay

1909

It was a long way to go

To the friend's house,

So she,

Hattie,

And Marjorie

Dressed themselves like cloth bells

And swung with each step

Through the snow.



She had not slept much the night before--

When the fireside is warm

And the wine is good

There are more uses than one for a lady's scarf;

But today she talks of cobblers and cows

To Hattie

And Marjorie

Because, after all,

Friends, too, can warm a woman's heart.



It was a long way to go,

From the morning to the evening--

She grew tired

And her feet got cold.

Eventually, her friends

Hattie,

And then Marjorie,

Went their own way into night across the snow.

I cannot see my foot tracks anymore, she thought,

No helpful light yet drifting from the sky;

I cannot feel my fingers,

Nor my slowly quieting heart...

I cannot feel...

I cannot feel...

I.

________

for Magpie 49

Dedicated to my grandmother, whose name was Marjorie. You are missed.

_________

Beautiful Mess

I drew poppies

With red O.P.I.

On the white window sill

And your messy hair

As you slept

Looked like crow's wings

Spread

Across impossible

Joyful

Fairy tales.

______

One Shot Wednesday

Questions And Answers, Once Upon A Time

Carrying my heart between my lungs in a bag of broken glass

So I wear a thousand overcoats

And can't feel it when they ask



What are you going to do about...?

Why do you...?

What makes you think that we...?

You always...

You never...



The best thing about a bottle is it has a mouth but never talks

So I take it off alone some place

And we kiss til I can't walk



Do you care about ____ at all?

Is anything more important to you than...?

How long do you think you can...?

You'll only wind up dead...



Please shut up and let me pass out here

On the shards so pretty and red.

_______

Dance of the Blackbird

First of all, I've cheated. I found the photo prompt at One Shoot Sunday too tame, and so I've switched it out for one I like better. As Cyndi Lauper sang, ain't no law against it yet.

Now then. Even a girl not properly respectful of photo prompts must respect her betters, and my favorite poetess in the cyber world, Hedgewitch, has introduced me to the sestina. Here is mine.

DANCE OF THE BLACKBIRD



Because of desire, I so loved the rain

I slipped out of my body to float in the air

With an ancient prayer, I slipped my skin

Dismissing virtue, dismissing sin

I kissed the storm and joined it there

Incorporeal, a dreamer insane



To those who would live in a body of air

To those who would touch the storm on its skin

If light is love, if darkness is sin

What of the ones who mix them there?

To those who call the serene insane

Slip out of your skins, slip into the rain



What I love best is smooth olive skin

By candle light, inviting sin

Dark hair like dark weather spreading there

To make me shake with desire insane

As ice is to steam, as steam is to rain

You are to me as flesh is to air



Proscriptions are boring, so is sin

What's gone comes back, what's vanished is there

In my sleep like sighs, like a night insane

To fall like an angel, wrapped in rain

To rise like spirit when kissed by air

Without constraint, nor bone, nor skin



A wail of wind, a strike just there

What began in calm, arrives insane

In driving need and driving rain

Heat rising into cooler air

A shade obsessed with pulse and skin

Twists holy love with edgy sin



Desire in the bones is desire insane

As love of you is love of the rain

To find you, I've turned my body to air

To touch you, I've brought the sky to your skin

My mind to fever, my heart to sin

A floundering bird in the storm's heart, there



I've so loved the rain that so loves your skin

Carried by clouds to salvation and sin

Did you even, ever, know I was there?

_______

Hey, give a squirrel a hand here, guys!

Enjoy!

(poetry returns soon!)

Are ya ready, Boots?

Start walkin'!

The Black Ops Bread Truck

In the dawn comes the black ops bread truck--

I think you know the one I mean;

Switching out donuts in the misty dawn--

Swapping out custard for creme.



Darling, darling,

I've put a sugar-dusted mini to my eye

But, through the donut, you don't seem any sweeter,

So baby, this is goodbye.



The black ops bread truck people

Perform missions more twisted than a cruller;

But, lambchop, our love has grown stale,

And couldn't really get any duller.



Black ops bakery,

Swoop in, carry me off, like a loaf beneath your arm--

And then.....slap me around until I admit

This poem really sucks. Darn.



I guess I am really just a lightweight--

Like a smuggled-in bag of Happy Chips

Still, dear heart, you've been deposed

And all that other crappy shit...



Our crumby love has ended,

Our inventory is down to the bone--

Now I'm leaving with the black ops bread truck

But I leave you

this stupid

poem.

_____

My skills have clearly eroded.

Le Printemps

I traveled across an icy place.

My shoes fit badly.

I reminded no one of Swan Lake.



I arrived, in a snow storm, in front of a coin laundry, under an overhang.

The pavement was wet.

An old black man was mumbling on a bench.

Cars crawled by like thoughts through a hangover.



There was a woman there,

With a baby on her hip,

And a cigarette in her hand.

There was no bible god in sight, and so I

Put my hand to the back of her month-old highlights and kissed her

Like a butterfly landing on a pastry.



When I leaned back to gaze into her eyes,

She squinted and said,

"Who the fuck are you?"

Standing there in my old parka and knit hat, I said,

"I am the Spirit of Spring, baby."

She was wearing boots, jeans, a brown ribbed turtleneck and a red flannel shirt.

She took a drag, blew it out, and then stood there in the smoke cloud

As if it were dry ice.

She seemed to decide something, tossed away her smoke and tilted her head.

I followed her.

The baby looked back at me as if I were some amazing talking toy.



She lived above the coin laundry.

There was crap all over the place;

A little portable stereo on the floor,

Books on the couch,

Off the kitchen a stuffed-full pantry with no door.

I said, "I came to the coin laundry to get clean."

She said, "I came to the coin laundry to get kissed."



In the morning, she kicked me out,

But with a smile.

The baby was fussing behind me as I went down the stairs.

All my clothes smelled like an ashtray.

I had trouble getting through the downstairs door to the street

Because of my glorious, white, soft-feathered wings,

And everywhere I looked,

The apple trees had blossomed overnight.

_______

amazing photograph by Daryl Edelstein

linked to magpie 48 and One Shot Wednesday 28

The Passionate Gypsy To Her Love

I am always the red leaf on the green tree--

The odd wildflower that turns up in the garden.

I have learned to spot trouble from a mile away--

I get ready to fight.

I will bite and draw blood without apology,

But I am still more lost dog than wolf,

And as sweet by nature.



As I have gotten older,

If there is a different fish in the stream, it will swim into my hand;

If there is a ring around the moon, it will rise over my house,

And the spirits laugh at the jars I hang from the trees to catch them.



I am the shaded rain drop among the clear--

The Queen of Funnels in your stolen deck.

I do not see things the same.

When I was younger, my visions scared me--

They swirled and never slept.

Now they are as familiar as a house cat,

And roughly as biddable.

When I look at you at night as you sleep,

I use the spooky yellow eyes of my dreams.



I am a gypsy and the road is long--

There is always a red sky in the morning,

But nobody could ever tell me anything.

Nobody could stop me, once I picked up my skirts and put my head down.

What I'm trying to tell you, sweetheart, is

It's the weather inside my skin that creates the roadside that I see.

There will always be haints and hurricanes there--

But when I shake my hair and speak your name,

When I feel that sweet flush from thinking of you, or seeing you swaying like a sunflower to some music on the air,

There is beauty in my world.

There is some notion of a resting place and a delicious trembling,

Whether from laughter or desire.

These things are there because you are,

And so I thank you, darling mine,

From the bottom of my crazy gypsy soul.

________

for One Shoot Sunday

picture by KJ Halliday

Thomas Hardy Zombie

with apologies to Pete

Radiation from the Archbishop of Canterbury's cell phone

Wakes Thomas Hardy Zombie from his rest.

He emerges,

Crosses himself,

Genuflects,

Then eats the Archbishop's worthy brains.



Thomas Hardy Zombie shuffles out of Westminster Abbey.

He needs a men's clothier.

He needs a haberdasher.

He needs to get on the tube.

In London,

No one speaks English,

No one is actually from there,

And no one gives a fuck about you, or your stupid Wessex, either.



Thomas Hardy left his heart in Stinsford, next to Emma.

He sits on the underground train,

Unable to read the map on the opposite wall, because of the pregnant woman,

The war cripple,

And the noisy group of drunken Germans,

All standing in front of where he is seated.

Must the Germans cook everything in beer, thinks Thomas Hardy Zombie,

Even their noodles?

The thought makes his stomach turn over,

And he belches loudly.

"Pardon me," mumbles Thomas Hardy Zombie, mortified.

His elegant Victorian manners remain largely intact.



Because he is a zombie, his mind is fraught with hellish nightmares:

The Welsh.

The Irish.

Worst of all, the Scots.

He moans.

To settle himself, he decides to compose a love poem.

As the train clacks and jostles, the great writer considers his task, and what sentiments,

Which natural wonders,

What unforgettable bucolic setting

Should he choose?

He begins to write:



brains
brains
brains
eat brains!



He pauses, to review.

Not exactly "A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight", but

It's something down on paper,

Something to tidy up and work from.



Getting off the train, Thomas Hardy Zombie forgets the recorded warning to "mind the gap",

And his leg goes straight down between the car and the platform,

Snapping off like a moldy twig.

He is stampeded over by students and smartly-dressed young businesswomen,

All of them wearing a dizzying array of greys,  blacks, and charcoal.

One of them dares to wear a red scarf,

And is thundered over without regard, as well.



Thomas Hardy Zombie hops, one-legged, to the escalator.

This presents a problem, so he stops.

A group of Japanese,

Then a small pod of Indian techno-nerds

Trample him from behind.

The fragile, long-dead (and living dead) poet is ground to dust under their heels.

With that,

The President Of The Immortals had ended his sport with Thomas Hardy Zombie,

And his final work goes unfinished.



Humbly, I complete it here:

brains
mmm, brains
brains
brains
brains


(You're welcome.)

________

Life Story

Lightning struck the tree--

Mama blamed me,

But she couldn't find my trialsome ass

Cos one block of blackened wood looks much like the next.

So, I slipped the strike in my pocket

And took up smoking,

Kissed the girl next door--

She was older,

Invited me in,

Shut the door,

And I grew up like a gypsy in her jewelry box--

Hers and a dozen others more.



Years later, another light came out of Heaven,

And I sobered up--

Quit cursing during grace,

Or wearing fishnets on the church steps;

Tried the straight and narrow ways

For a while,

Crocodile.



Now I live in a bower made of books;

I whisk words with the places I've been and haven't been--

I spend my days out on the porch,

And after dark, I'm in.

I kiss my finger when I've cut it on a page-edge;

My dog sticks close to home.

The old strike is still there,

Kept between my writing chair

And the window where I watch the dandelion seeds

And river reeds.

My remaining life lies just beyond,

It might be wise or unwise,

But what it so certainly is,

Is exquisitely,

Deliciously,

My own.

_________

House Of Wax

He moved her into a house filled with spirits,

Then brought in that gloomy, ring-eyed excorcist

Before she'd had the chance to sleep with half of them.

No wonder he fell down the basement stairs

Christmas Eve,

His egg nog balanced perfectly unspilled on the second step,

Him at the bottom,

Staring broken-necked at the dryer.



These things happen, said the firemen,

Snapping their gurney open smartly and removing him on it too soon,

Before she'd had the chance to sleep with half of them.

No wonder their alarms keep going off

At exactly midnight in the firehouse

When there is no emergency

And the telephones make that awful off-the-hook whining noise

Inside their heads.



All I'm trying to say,

Is if you come to stay,

Kiss her softly,

Welcome her crossed ankles across your back,

And remember--

There's plenty of time to fill your lungs in the sunrise,

Hours from now,

Haunted and scented like last night's candle,

Rolled out the back door

And into the light.

________

Worldes Blis

In the time of the black death,

There were still little silly white clouds,

Floating overhead like some sort of joke.



On the day of the ergot fungus,

The bread brought visions,

Panic,

And the violent jerks of St. Vitus' dance.



Leave off your washing--

You'll only have to burn it all anyway.

Meet me in the fields,

By the road where the Duchess's carriage lies tilted and empty in the ditch.



I have a half a loaf of rye,

And all afternoon to spend.

Come kiss me.

Use your tongue.

I already know you're contagious, and that I am infected;

We can lie here on our backs,

Watching the clouds, and our hallucinations.



If we don't die first,

I will tell you that I love you.

It's true, but

You can laugh, and blame fever or psychosis,

If you're even still answering me

At all.

______


"Worldes Blis" is a 12th century chant, which says, essentially, "earthly joys don't last for long." You can't really dance to it.

_______

Winter Wheat

I tried to make a bargain with the morning

Out on the dirt road

Frozen hard.

I said,

"I will swap you one of my dreams--"

But she shook her hair, the way straight women do;

(It was made of slanting light--

I could see right through)

Her boredom made my joints ache,

And kind of pissed me off, too.



I did something bad to the morning,

And had all I could handle

Rolling her down into the half ice of the river.

Ever seen a girl like her fall off a star?

The river held her for just a moment,

Then cracked its bones

And let her fall.

She sank

Like my heart does

Whenever you leave my little room.



I came back and told you what I'd done to the morning,

Though you were still sleeping

With one hand under your pillow

And the other

Waiting for me to kiss it

And fill it with wet delicious cherries.



What I had wanted from the morning

Was to swap out one of my dreams

(One of the good ones, with lightning and talking cats and fields of winter wheat grown high in a Kansas July)

For a simple promise:

That you would stay.

That you would wrap your body around mine and not leave;

That I could bury my face in your coarse black hair and breathe,

As if it were smoke from a smudge stick,

Keeping devils away.



But I killed the morning,

And left her blankly tossing her hair at the bottom of the river.

You will wake up, see the time,

And those perfect hands of yours will only grace cold car keys

While I kiss the devil

And call her by your name.

________

Disasters Elsewhere

What is more dull than other people's lovers?

And what is less compelling

Than disasters elsewhere

And the people who wring their hands over them?



What matters is

My coffee isn't right

And you have not kissed me

In more than ten hours.



I am a dry leaf.

Shall I shade you?

I need all the world's rain for myself--

Get out of here,

And take with you all the places I never go.



Once,

I was a messenger of divine kindness.

I taped together wounded butterflies,

And even watched your damn kids.

Now,

I have someone else do my dancing, though badly,

And I steal songs from the throats of yellow birds

To stuff into my stiff black shoes

Lest they lose their shape.



Someone else's lover came knocking at my door

With an earthquake in his hands.

People fell from him.

My steps shivered and cracked.



You know,

This coffee just isn't right

And you have not kissed me

In more than ten years,

But you hang all over that bastard at the door.

Did you get sick of women?

Or was it because my brown autumn eyes

Left you in famine,

So you sought out the flood?

_________

a little portrait of the butch from hell, for One Shot Wednesday

Feral Flux

I tried to fit in.

I did.

I tried to sleep in a bed,

To stretch out on linen sheets with the scent of lavender on my skin,  light as a blessing,

Or like snow on the frozen,

Staring straight up.



After a while, I always begin to itch and wear out razors by the pack full,

Every day,

Watching the dirt on my feet turn to pads,

My nails to claws.



I tried to lunch with the ladies.

I swear.

They ordered salads, and I meant to, too,

But before I knew it,

I was skidding across the table with a rabbit in my jaws

And it bled

On the cutlery and the bread,

And I grew nervous

As I lay it down dead and jumped through the plate glass

And into the night.



I tried to be what I saw.

Honestly.

But I have always been so hungry,

So wild,

So other.

I have skulked around garbage cans and allowed housewives to shoo me with brooms.

Now, though,

I will drag one by her dreams to my home dug into the earth.

I will call her by the name of the eclipsed moon.

I will wait for her until she comes barefoot to seek my golden gaze

On the coldest night of the year.



Then,

I will tend as smooth and soft as such things can ever go;

I will speak in the voice I forgot before my earliest memory,

And I will make love with her

This time--

Oh, this time,

Without searching.

_________

THE WINTER SCHOOL by Fireblossom and Hedgewitch

Darlings, I'm taking a departure from my usual unicorns and sugar fairies this morning, in order to bring you this collaborative effort from the almost illegally talented Hedgewitch and (for ballast) Yours Truly. Blame her for the absence of anime bunnies. I would have included them. And now, without further tedious ceremony, our poem...

THE WINTER SCHOOL



At the Winter School,
Classes were held at night--
Girls on the left,
Spirits on the right;
Our elbows scratched lessons on frosted windows,
And our teachers sang us lullabyes
While appearing to us as crows.

But they were not as kind as crows.
They cawed and pecked at living and dead--
We learned to cover the eyes, and stuff the nose
Inside a book, reading through our fingers, pass or fail,
Fettered with sweaty palms and liquid sighs,
Dancing with dragons and jumping from their tails
Was all we knew to do to see the sky.

But girls have their ways, and we had ours.
We hid tar in our traveling bags,
And stars in brown deserted bowers;
When the time was right,
We crept down the stair and into the night;
No stay or whalebone could keep us there--
Not with our summer-drunk dragons in sight.

I would be Circe and you dark Medea,
Me for the luring and you for the kill.
It was all a game, though we knew that such pastimes
As crows put together are contests of will;
Chaos would call us to fight their knight goblins, stranglers
With garlands of weeds, green gilded with lies
Gifting masks of agreement we knew would not fit us
So we called the black dragons to come from the skies.

_________

image: Medea

PS--fans of the ongoing Fireblossom-G Man grudge match have GOT to click HERE!