Tag Archives: epic poetry

August 14, 2012 · 8:17 am

27. Conversation From Love Through Fear

As Mmirrimann stirred, lost in ancient times,
A great green dragon in a cave as black
As scales that somehow gleamed inside the dark,
He felt Ssruanne beside him, sending life
Into the dreams that tried to capture him
And let him drift away into forgetfulness.
Then, slicing through his dream as if a claw
Had separated clouds, revealing sky,
An image of a valley high above
The caves, beneath a shining silver moon,
Filled up the emptiness inside of him.

He opened up his eyes and saw Ssruanne.
Her head raised up, her eyes awhirl with colors,
Engaged with all the images that flooded
Through Mmirrimann and forced him back to life.

He stirred, his thoughts replete with shadowed shapes,
And concentrated on his long-time love.
She saw his grin and puffed a ring of smoke
Into the darkness of the icy cave.

“What did you find?” she asked inside her head.

He looked away from eyes that seemed to scald
His life with endless memories, the two of them,
Wings filled with power, spiraling toward
The summer sun as passion trumpeted
Their fervor to the mountain peaks below.

“The mother of the girl has built a bridge
Of power in the purgatorial space
Where winds that are no winds blow in a gale,”
He grumbled deep inside his massive chest.
“She needs to save her child and interrupts
The natural order of the universe.”

Ssruanne stayed still, and let her body’s heat
Send life into the love she’d cherished through
The human wars into the days of peace.

“The geas is right?” she asked. “The child must live?”

“I took the woman’s bridge from nothingness,”
He answered. “When I passed I’m sure the bridge
Disintegrated into nothingness.”

“It’s over then? The child has lost her powers?”

“Shrrunak has left his cave and gathers males
Around him for another human war,”
He said, the image of the valley bathed
In silver light inside his head. “I felt
The rage the witch felt when I used her bridge.
She’ll not give up. She’ll make another bridge.”

Ssruanne looked at the smudge of morning light
That tinged a small cloud’s underside outside
The cave, dawn gray and cold with winter winds.

“How can you build a bridge between the wall
That separates reality from death?”
She asked. “I know the spirit beasts can find
A moment anchored in our time, but they
Are insubstantial, not quite corporal.”

“Perhaps the child should perish,” Mmirrimann
Said softly. “But I fear the forces spinning
From where I was into this world or ours.
I don’t believe the dragon race can live
Unless we find a way to live in peace.
The human girl is like a key stone strong
Inside a wall, but if it’s taken out,
The wall will crumble to a pile of dust.
Shrrunak can send all that we’ve built to dust.”

Ssruanne looked long at him and hummed her fear.

“We’re old,” she said. “Shrrunak can char our scales.”

“He’s gathering a dragon army, figuring
He’ll use the tactics made by human wiles
To waste the villages and towns that sprout
Like mushrooms all across the wilderness.”

“The deathless realms will fill with spirits then,”
She said. “Both dragons and their human foes
Will die in droves. As dragons we won’t win.”

“Shrrunak has left the caves and won’t be back
Until he’s built his dragon army, ravening
Across the landscape like a fiery scythe.”

Ssruanne’s scales rippled her distress that made
Her move from Mmirrimann. He did not move.

“We’ll face our doom,” he said at last. “I need
To rest and think about experiencing
The winds of purgatory, what I’ve learned.
I did not journey past my memories
To die,” he said. “I trekked to find a path
That leads to dragons hatching out of eggs
Into the glories of a dragon’s life.”

To listen to this section of the epic, click on Conversation from Love through Fear.

Note: This is the twenty-seventh section of a long narrative poem, which has grown into The Dragon Epic. Inspired by John Keats’ long narrative poem, Lamia, it tells a story set in ancient times when dragons and humans were at peace. Click on the numbers below to reach other sections, or go to the Categories box to the right under The Dragon Epic. Click on 1 to go to the beginning and read forward. Go to Escaping Possession to go to the section previous to this one. To read the next poem in the series, click on Unexpected Warning.

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August 6, 2012 · 6:33 am

26. Escaping Possession

The Dragon Epic by Thomas Davis

Ruarther woke to sunlit cold, his head
So sore he felt as if his life was bound
Inside the thrumming pain that made him scowl.
The burns were gone from arms, legs, chest,
And though he felt as if he could not move,
His spirit rose to know that he’d survived
The night black dragon and its searing flame.
The fire beside the boulder smoldered, smoke
Still rising from the cold, gray, lumpy ash.
He stirred up from the hollow in the snow
He’d made for sleep and, groaning, found his pack
And put a slice of jerky in his mouth.
The goat was strong beneath the heavy spice,
But he had never tasted food so good.
He was alive and eating, wolfing meat
That tasted like sweet honey to his tongue.

He looked toward the campfire, felt the cold,
And thought he’d build it up and warm his hands,
But then he picked his pack up, shouldered it,
And started climbing through the dazzling fields.
He’d not find where the witch’s cottage was
Before the sun blazed down, he told himself.
He’d better move before his will had failed
And warmth became the cause for lethargy.
He’d never kill the child by staying put.

The surface of the snow had frozen hard.
He moved as swiftly as his legs could move.
The walking cleared his head and made him feel
As if he’d found his humanness again.
He thanked the spirit bear inside his mind,
Exhilarated at the strength he felt.

But then, just miles from where the cliffs rose black
Into the winter’s white, he stopped, confused.
The air in front of him looked charged, a mass
Of swirling chaos threatening to end
The world’s solidity with nothingness.
He felt the bear rear up inside the chaos,
Felt snow and fields and light sucked into dark.
A woman, waving hands, had somehow grabbed
The bear with energies Ruarther felt,
But could not see, a battle raging far
Beyond his senses even though he sensed
The powers devastating what was real,
Miasma threatening existence anchored
To life he’d always thought was all that was.
He stepped back as the chaos inched toward
Where he had stopped, the swirling wild with songs
Originating from beyond existence.

A greater fear than what he’d felt the day
He’d faced the golden dragon seized his heart
And made it beat so fast he could not breathe.
He saw the bear’s face waver in the light
And then the woman’s weaving web of hands
As death came from its natural place and tried
To build a portal to Ruarther’s world.
He wondered why he’d left his days-old camp
To face a wilderness he’d thought was myth
Made up by women and old, doddering men.

The great bear turned away from chaos, stared
At where Ruarther stood in front of him
Inside the realness of the real world
And leaped toward the body with a heart.

The witch is doing this, Ruarther thought.
The witch! He tried to dive away from where
The bear had aimed his leap, but even though
He moved as fast as any human could,
Convulsions ripped his consciousness.
He fought against the spirit entering
His spirit, tried to be the self he was,
But in his mind the great bear roared and roared.
Time wavered as the sunlight flared, then died,
Then flared alive again, the chaos mixed
With life’s stability, existence swelling
With spectres lost beyond the boundaries
Of what could ever be or come to be.

The child, Ruarther raged inside himself,
The witch’s child had made the dragon mock
Him as he hunted in the woods that day,
And now she’d witched the bear into his spirit.
He’d kill the child, he roared. He’d kill the girl.

The spirit in him roared against his roar.
Ruarther felt the self he knew recoil
As chaos swirled into his head and bones.
I’m stronger than the bear, he snarled inside.
His heart beat crazily, his fear
The only rage that kept him from possession,
The end of who he was, a human man.
I’ll kill the girl, he chanted in his head.
The witch’s girl is dead. I’ll kill the girl.

The great bear twisted as it fought to find
A place away from where the woman’s hands
Wove order out of chaos in chaotic song.
Ruarther twisted painfully in snow
So cold it seemed to burn his throbbing flesh.
He felt as if he was inside a furnace,
The brick kiln burning with a glowing heat,
His skin so sensitive it seared with pain,
As if he’d touched a fiery red-hot coal
And spread its agony across his face,
Hours blistering into eternity.

The bear retreated from the searing pain,
Life’s sharpness shredding who it was
Into the emptiness of air and sky.
Chaotic swirling dissipated like a mist.
The sunlit cold possessed the world again.
Ruarther, body still, stunned, felt his life
Inside the who of who he was, a man.

Splayed out upon the snow, he wondered how
He’d ever thought he had the strength to kill
A witch so powerful she had the force
To bend a dragon’s spirit to her will.
He could not countenance that he still lived
Outside of deathless chaos in his world.

To listen to this section of the epic, click on Escaping Possession.

Note: This is the twenty-sixth section of a long narrative poem, which has grown into The Dragon Epic. Inspired by John Keats’ long narrative poem, Lamia, it tells a story set in ancient times when dragons and humans were at peace. Click on the numbers below to reach other sections, or go to the Categories box to the right under The Dragon Epic. Click on 1 to go to the beginning and read forward. Go to 25 to go to the section previous to this one. Go to 27 to read the next section.

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July 29, 2012 · 6:13 am

25. Plotting Human Extinction

an epic poem by Thomas Davis

The darkness, black as scales upon Sshruunak,
Awash with atmospheres that breathed unrest,
Intensified inside the mountain valley
That saw one dragon, then another, then
Another glide with silent wings to land
Into a ring of black obsidian boulders.
Sshruunak, placed in the ring’s dead center, glared
At each great dragon as they flared their wings
And settled in a loop around his force,
Eyes glittering to see he’d left his cave.

No dragon spoke, but waited for Sshruunak.
The wounded male puffed fire into the air.
It let them see each other in the dark,
But only briefly as Sshruunak began
To speak inside his mind about his plans.

“The humans cannot live,” he said. “Their minds
Are dangerous to dragonkind, their tools
As evil as their deadliness and hate.
I’ve learned,” he said, his voice still silent, “how
Our strength is not enough to make them cower.
They swarm like wasps inside a paper hive
And pour out on the ground with deadly arrows
As if their puny bodies boiled alive
The end of who we’ve been through centuries
Of living strength upon this earth, our earth.
I’ve lost an eye and feel the pain they bring
To every dragon who has sense to rage
Against abomination in our midst.

“I’ve brooded long,” he said. “I’ve seen their power.
I’ve seen that if we try to use our strength,
Our fiery breath, our flight, our deadly claws,
To end the peril that they represent,
We’ll end up fertilizing earth in graves
That mark the final end of dragonkind.
Old Mmirrimann is not the fool he seems.
Ssruanne’s geas capturing our spirits
Burns from a knowledge born of memories
And senses I have never known or dreamed.”

His rumbling stopped. The long necks of the others
Stopped moving from the trance he’d interweaved
About them, capturing them through his mind.
At last, the silence lengthening, Ssshraann,
The dragon closest to Sshruunak, his red,
Dark scales dull in the valley’s darkness, sneered.
“And so we hide inside our caves and let the humans
Grow stronger year by year as dragons weaken?”
He shook his massive head and almost grinned.
“That’s not Sshruunak,” he said, his voice intense.

Sshruunak stayed silent, but his voice rang out
Inside his head and stunned the other males.

“The humans swarm,” he said. “Like ants or wasps,
And then they use their tools to penetrate
Our scales and seek our vulnerabilities.”
He paused, his eyes alight with swirling colors.
“Each dragon feels his power in his hearts.
He breathes his fire and spreads his massive wings
And throws himself at puny, boiling ants
And rends and tears their flesh and spills their blood
In gallons on the ground and murders them.
But never does a dragon swarm and boil
Like wasps stirred from a threatened nest,
And so we fly into their stinging arrows
And die as solitary as our spirits.
We murder them, but let their numbers murder
Each one of us as if we were alone
And had no species linked to who we are.”

“We learn to form an army like the humans?”
Sshraann asked. “Act like insubstantial fools?”

Sshruunak raged fire into the night, his breath
So hot it penetrated dragon hides
And made each dragon step away from him.
The great snow covered peaks around the valley
Grew even darker as his fire went on and on.
He roared so loud an avalanche began
To roar in distance down a mountainside.
The males, eyes glittering, stared amazed
At dragon power unleashed into the world.

The silence following the roar was sudden,
A chaos filled with dreadful absences.
Sshruunak’s great head bowed down toward the snow
Inside the circle of obsidian.
He spoke outloud, his voice as soft as snow
Descending slowly out of windless skies.

“I see us flying in a full moon’s golden light,”
He said. “As silent as my voice is now.
We’re primed with fire and human discipline.
Each one has targets to attack and kill.
Each one of us is bound by orders planned
So that we decimate our enemies.
We come upon a human town and swoop
Into the human helplessness and burn
Their leaders as they try to form defense
Against a threat they’ve never thought would come.
I see our legions wing into their mass,
Our darkness deadly, purpose aimed and armed
With knowledge born of dragon strength and wiles.
I see the humans dying like the ants they are,
Their villages and towns black, smoking ruins.”

Sshraann grinned in the darkness, showed his teeth,
And looked into Sshruunak’s bright, whirling eyes.
He felt the dragon army forming in the night
Around him, Drressel, Stoormachen, Waanderlund,
The leading males born since the human peace
Born in the caves agreeing with the vision
Of dragons massed into an army, flying
Through moonlit skies toward the final answer
To humans and their domination of the earth.

Click on Planning Human Extinction to listen to this section of the epic.

Note: This is the twenty fifth section of a long narrative poem, which has grown into The Dragon Epic. Inspired by John Keats’ long narrative poem, Lamia, it tells a story set in ancient times when dragons and humans were at peace. Click on the numbers below to reach other sections, or go to the Categories box to the right under The Dragon Epic. Click on 1 to go to the beginning and read forward. Go to 24 to go to the section previous to this one. Click on 26 to go to the next part of the epic.

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July 22, 2012 · 7:04 am

24. Rising Sentience

an epic poem by Thomas Davis

Inside her cave, emotions traumatized
From feeling how Wei’s eyes had looked at her
And seemed to strip her essence from her spirit,
Ssruanne instinctively sent out her thoughts
To Mmirrimann inside his nearby cave.
The ancient dragon dragged his shrouded spirit
Toward his bed beside the cave’s deep pool
Exhausted, beaten by a journey taken
In desperation that he could not curb.

The sense of Wei’s bright eyes beneath her scales
Exploring deep into a dragon’s self
Dissolved when Ssruanne felt the song of chaos
Reverberating uncontrollably
In Mmirrimann’s unconsciousness as if
He’d faced his doom and somehow was alive.
The aches she’d felt from feeling violation
Wisped out of her and, with an eagerness
Pushed by a rush of fear, she stood outside,
The mountain winds soft on her golden scales.
What had her ancient lover tried to do?
She leaped to air and glided to his cave.

The leader of the mountain dragons slumped
Onto his bed and stared at golden eyes
That whirled at where his head was pressed in stone.
He tried to order thoughts into his mind,
But images replete with nothingness
And roaring sounds of endless chaos made
Him close his eyes against the fierceness burning
In living dragon eyes that stared at him.
He had to live, to leave the nothingness
Infecting who he once had been behind,
But in the roaring thought was tenuous,
A string of self that could not know his self.
He willed the window from the chaos closed,
But in the cave the stone walls wavered, motes
Solidifying, then dissolving into motes,
Light flickering into his mind, then sweeping
Into the roar of silence swirling, swirling. . .

Ssruanne stared angrily at Mmirrimann.
He’d gone too far. She saw the journey braved
Past dragon memories into the realms
Where time and living spirits danced in chaos
More spectres than a memory
Of life once lived upon the living earth.
What will had brought him back into his cave
Was past an understanding she possessed.
His scales seemed insubstantial, light, not flesh.
He did not seem to have the strength to open
His eyes to see the safety that he’d found.

She knew the motivation driving him.
She heard, inside her mind, the rage Sshruunak
Spewed from his mind into his followers,
The great young males that saw his massive strength
And did not see how puny human strength
Had sent him, wounded, fleeing to his cave.
She saw what rage and mindless joy in strength
Had done to dragon lives through time, the long,
Dark spiraling toward a time when dragons
Were only myths long lost from memory.
His courage blazing, Mmirrimann had braved
The chaos where the spirit beasts brewed life
From nothingness and came to feed
Upon earth light and dragon/human lives.
He’d tried to find elixirs that would lead
The mountain dragons past the young males’ rage
Into a future guarding dragon eggs
And dragon wings and dragon sentience.

“You are a fool,” Ssruanne said. “Just a fool.”

She walked into the cave and pressed her scales
Against his scales and tried to warm the cold
Chilled deep into his spirit by the wind
That was no wind, the place of deathless souls.
She forced her warmth into his cold and strained
To find the order still inside his mind
And tried to reach the will that he had used
To bring his body back into his cave.

“The dragon race is not gone yet,” she said
Outloud, her voice an echo in the cave.

She felt his reaching out toward her warmth,
The fiery essence of her dragon mind.
She forced her thoughts of Wei to disappear
And placed a block upon Sshruunak’s dark thoughts
To keep them out of Mmirrimann, his cold.
She laid beside him on his stone smooth bed
And sent her memories of watching eggs
Begin to wobble as a hatchling struggled
From darkness into light and dragon life.
She felt again the joy of seeing life,
The promise of another generation,
Continuing the glory of their race.
She nestled close and soaked his cold with warmth
As hours passed day toward the winter night.

“You’ll live,” she told him in the ancient tongue.
“We’ll face Sshruunak and keep the war
He’s brewed from ever happening. We will.”

He formed a thought, then lost its substance, fought
Toward his sentience, fell back, then felt
Ssruanne beside him in his mountain cave.
He reached toward her warmth and living mind.
He loved her. She loved him. A thought
And feeling formed inside the chaos, let
Him feel her body pressed against his body.
He sighed his rising sentience and grinned.

Click on Rising Sentience to listen to this section of the epic.

Note: This is the twenty fourth installment of a long narrative poem, which has grown into The Dragon Epic. Inspired by John Keats’ long narrative poem, Lamia, it tells a story set in ancient times when dragons and humans were at peace. Click on the numbers below to reach other sections, or go to the Categories box to the right under The Dragon Epic. Click on 1 to go to the beginning and read forward. Go to 22 to go to the section previous to this one. To read the next section click on 25.

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July 13, 2012 · 6:20 am

23. Creating a Dragon Out of Air

Wei waved her arms and saw the dragon grow,
The bones and flesh beneath scales pulsing life.
The image seemed to meld her blood with blood
Alive and moving through the morning’s sun.
Inside her mind she started singing, trying
To bring from light a life that flowed from hands
That conjured particles of light and made
them dragon flesh. Her voice, reverberating
With power larger than a little girl,
Rang out into the mountains, fields of snow.

She felt the dragon twist in front of her,
Saw dragon eyes look down into her eyes,
And felt the power in the spells she cast,
Her spirit singing hymns of earth-born bliss.
She’d never dreamed that she could see a dragon,
Feel deep into its spirit and its bones,
And conjure life from sunlight, empty air.
She felt as large as jagged mountain peaks
That rose majestically above the world.
Her voice rose deep into a dragon’s roar.
She breathed her life into the dragon’s life.
She reached for chaos where her mother’s hands
Were weaving magic through her hands,

But then she felt the dragon’s tail begin
To flicker as the whole she tried to hold
Inside her mind began to dissipate.
She quickly moved her hands, solidified
The tail, but as the image firmed, the life
Inside her voice began to skitter, fragment
Into a dance of light above the snow.
She reached out to her mother, tried to find
Her essence in the chaos of the light.
An overwhelming sense of emptiness
Engulfed her, causing her to feel how young
She was, how vulnerable, how lost.
The dragon, formed of light, collapsed as flesh
Became the molecules of nothingness.
The winter day was bright with morning sun.

She tried to find her mother in the maelstrom
Where death whirled clouds of souls into a dance
That had no individual substance, life.
She felt like wailing like a little girl
Whose mother slept inside her restless grave.
She held back sobs, got on her feet, and stumbled
Into the cottage to her mother’s bed.
Ssruanne, she told herself. Ssruanne still lives.

She tried to see her mother by the bed,
Her form half in the room, a wavering
Between the universe of death and life.
She waved her arms and tried to cast a spell
That penetrated boundaries and let
Her see her mother and her father’s forms,
But nothing happened. All her power wisped
Into the air and only let her touch
Her mother’s bed, an aching emptiness.

She felt the dragon’s scale upon her arm
Pulse hot with beating from a dragons’ heart.
She stared at where it glowed with dragon life,
A life inside of her that was not her.
Ssruanne, she thought. Ssruanne still lives.

The revelation seeped into her like
The rising of the pool where dragonflies
Assembled in the early days of summer.
The dragon scale was part of her, her flesh.
She’d conjured it without Ssruanne in front
Of her to make her feel how it should be.

She reached out to her mother once again.
She felt the knot of humans waving arms
Inside a wind that was no wind or substance.
She felt despair inside the knot, the sense
The gate they’d made had transferred dragon flesh
Into the world and now was closed for good,
Their power faltering inside the chaos.
Wei sent her mind into the place her mother
Had made outside her deathbed’s bleak despair.
The essence of her mother sensed her presence,
Surrounded her with deathless weaves of love.

Stunned, Wei sat on the floor and stared at where
The dragon scale, embedded in her arm,
Throbbed from the beating of a dragon’s hearts.
She was alone, she thought: No human friends,
No dragon friends, no family, alone.
The winter cold burned harshness through the world.
She wondered if she’d be alive come spring.

To listen to this section of the epic, click on Creating a Dragon out of Air.

Note: This is the twenty third installment of a long narrative poem, which has grown into an epic. Inspired by John Keats’ long narrative poem, Lamia, it tells a story set in ancient times when dragons and humans were at peace. Click on the numbers below to reach other sections, or go to the Categories box to the right under The Dragon Epic. Click on 1 to go to the beginning and read forward. Go to 22 to go to the section previous to this one. Go to 24 to read the next section of the epic.

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June 25, 2012 · 5:57 am

21. Journeying to Chaos: A Search for Survival

an epic poem by Thomas Davis

Inside his cave, his massive spirit brooding,
The great male Mmirimann was still, his hearts
Swift rhythms slowed to somnolence, near death.
He journeyed through the layers of his self,
The memories ancestors had bestowed
In him kaleidoscopic as he saw
The dragon race devolve into a rage
Red-eyed, incensed that human brains could scurry
In bodies small as ants and still wrap him
With ropes that would not let him save himself.
And still he journeyed through his dragoness
Until he passed the vestiges of who
A dragon was and let the darkness grow
Into a universe much greater than his self.

At last, inside miasma, hearts still slow,
He came into a barren field, a place
Between the stars where sunlight never shined,
Not earth, not space, a place devoid of substance,
Yet real, where shades gloamed in the dusk
As chaos sang into the birth of stars
Yet in the eggs that would grow into light.
He felt the living substances of spirits,
Great animals whose strength had let them flee
Finality of death, the human shades
That teemed and swirled in clouds of mourning, searching
For absolution from the dark that came
Out of their lives and sense of who they’d been
While living in their times upon the earth,
The dragons, that still flew in rage in dark,
Grown monstrous with unwillingness to die
Though some had lived three hundred years or more.

Inside cacophony Mmirimann
Searched for an answer to his endless quest
To find a corridor where dragons lived
And did not spiral to their race’s death,
But everywhere he looked the universe
Of death whirled clouds of beasts and humans, dragons
That flew at him, their momentary faces
Alive with being, then a trail of mist
As bright eyes disappeared into the rising
Of other beings with their faces solid,
Then mist and chaos swirling endlessly.

There was no ending, no beginning, just
A swirling where a train of beings rose
Into their sense of self, then lost themselves
As time coagulated, formed, then flowed
Into the swirl of being, nothingness.
There was a dragon race; there was no race,
Its rising swallowed by the human song
That dominated all the earth, then, like
The dragons, swirled its eyes into miasma
As planets swung around their suns, and suns
Flared light into their darkness as their fires
Exploded into nova gravities
That swallowed matter near in time and space
And swirled into the chaos like the dragons,
The humans, the spirit beasts, the beings found
On other worlds in other times, miasma
Creating, shaping, then destroying as
Forever spun the endless mind of God.

The swirling tugged at Mmirimann and tried
To suck him deep into its endless maw.
He felt his mind and body disappearing
As dragon after dragon formed, then misted,
Its substance real, then disappeared, time filled
With lives that were, but never were, that sang
And then became a hurricane of souls
That had no individual substance, life,
But were the matter of the universe,
The swirl of chaos that created All.

He fought the tugging, taloned deep the spark
That made him who he was, a dragon great
Enough to brave the journey past his self,
And searched in desperation for a shelf
That he could grasp inside the maelstrom’s swirl.
And then he saw a single buzz of light
That did not waver, but was fixed inside
The endless swirling weaving strands of time.
He fought toward the light, the ledge where he
Could spread his wings and launch back to his life.

Time roared with silence, buffeting against
His will, his self, his sense of who he was.
He fought toward the buzz of light and forced
Himself to know himself, his dragon hearts—

And then he saw inside the light a human,
A woman from his place and time now dead,
Surrounded by a knot of humans waving
Their arms, creating substance from the chaos,
Their force a bridge between his world and where
He was inside the wind that was no wind.
A golden dragon wavered at the edge
Of where the human spectres generated
The ordered light, the only dragon seen
Inside the chaos of the roiling darkness.

He did not know if dragons lived or died
As time swirled from chaotic winds and gloam.
He could not see the corridor he sought
So that Sshrunnak’s rage would not lead to death
For dragons borning future generations.

He urged himself toward the light and blinked.
He felt his cave’s stone walls, hearts quickening,
The chaos just a song inside his ears.

To listen to this section of the epic, click Journeying to Chaos.

Note: This is the twenty first installment of a long narrative poem. Inspired by John Keats’ long narrative poem, Lamia, it tells a story set in ancient times when dragons and humans were at peace. Click on the numbers below to reach other sections, or go to the Categories box to the right under The Dragon Epic. Click on 1 to go to the beginning and read forward. Go to 20 to read the installment before this one. Click on 22 to go to the next section of the epic.

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June 9, 2012 · 7:47 am

19. Brewing Dragon War

an epic poem by Thomas Davis

Inside his cave Sshruunak’s dark thoughts unleashed
A constant storm that pummeled him with lightning
As pain and anger raged with burning hatred.
He felt a fire so fierce it made scales burn
Into his flesh and scar his spirit’s song.

He’d let the healers come, extract the arrows,
And wrap his bloody eye with salve and webbing
Designed to let a membrane heal the wound,
But then he’d sent long streams of dragon fire
To singe all other males brave enough
To bring their fury to his cold, dark lair.
He brooded in the darkness like the worm
The humans once had said described his kind
And tried to find his balance in a world gone mad.
He’d always thought himself impervious
To any human wile and could not understand
How two small humans had defeated him
And made him flee the battle like a coward.

When old Williama came and stood outside
His cave and called to him, he snorted fire
And rumbled with his incoherent rage,
But chasing elders off was not as easy
As threatening the friends he’d had since birthing.
The old, dark dragon waited for his fire
To spend its breath, then came inside, her eyes
So wild with whirling colors that she seemed
As potent as Ssruanne upon the dais.
She stood in light made by her eyes and curled
Her lips so that her rows of teeth gleamed white
Inside the storm of hatred that he’d brewed.

“You’re hiding from yourself,” she said, her voice
A whipping blade of anger. “Now you know
Why peace was made before all dragonkind
Was lost to history and ancient myths.”

Sshruunak let silence stretch and coil
Into discomfort as the elder stood
And stared implacably at where his eye
Was blind, her stance aggressive, challenging.

“This universe cannot let dragons live
While humans breed like rabbits in the spring,”
He growled at last. “We live; they die, or else
They live, and we become an ancient myth.
You used the words; I spit them in your craw!”

Williama’s eyes grew more intense. She snorted,
A puff of fire flared out to light the cave.

“I was a fool,” she said. “I heard the geas Ssruanne
Called from the ancient spirits of our race
And let my hatred of the humans crush
My sentience and send you out to where
You were as big a fool as I when I
Called for destruction of the human girl.
When Mmirimann negotiated peace
I thought he was insane, but we are thriving
Inside these caves where once our numbers fell
Year after year through centuries of time.
The peace has got to hold. It’s got to hold.”

He stirred. “The young will follow me,” he said.
“I’ve heard their talk outside the cave for days.”

“You think you are a leader then?” she asked.
“Like Mmirimann? Ssruanne? The ones who made
It possible for us to live our lives
Without the threat of arrows in our eyes?”

The blackness in him stirred alive a force
More powerful than any dragon was.
It overwhelmed his pain and blindness, swept
Aside the reason in Williama’s voice,
And roared into the cave so loud the stones
Above their heads began to tremble, crack.

Inside the universe of sound Williama
Stood still, despair a wailing in her head
That echoed back into the times when dragons
Were solitary in their greediness.
Inside the cave Sshruunak seemed like a nightmare,
Wings black, his spirit black as shining wings.
She stared into the storm of who he was
And tried to find his sentience, the key
That could unlock the future of his kind
And let them all avoid a dragon war
Where young fought elders as their futures waned.

“You cannot kill the human girl,” she said.
“Ssruanne is eldest. She has seen the song
That’s gathering inside our dragon hearts.”

The silence was so sudden that it echoed.
He glared at her, his eyes so strong they seemed
As if they had the will to hypnotize all time.

“The humans who were brave enough to send
Their arrows in my eye are dead,” he said.
“A single dragon’s not the force that dragons
Assembled like a human army are.
Ssruanne’s girl took away my dragoness
And made me silent when I meant to speak.
She’s just as dead as those two hunters are.”

“Ssruanne and Mmirimann will fight against
Your craziness,” Wwilliama said. “The elders
Won’t easily forsake the future of our race.”

“The elders battling the young?” he sneered.
His blackness seemed to stretch outside the cave
Into the winter cold and coal black night.
“The young will win,” he said. “The young will win.”

“We’ll see,” Wwilliama answered, sadness like
A pool of water covering her spirit.
“We’ll see what dawn and dragon hearts will bring.”

She turned and left the cave. Sshruunak saw deep
Into the universe and saw the power
Of rage engulfing all the earth in flame.

“The hunters and the girl are dead,” he said.
“And if the elders have to die, they’ll die.”

Ssruanne would never use her geas on him.
Inside the darkness of his cave he saw
His blackness leading as a hundred dragons
Flew massed toward a village wrapped in peace.

Listen to an audio of this section of the epic: 19

Note: This is the ninteenth installment of a long narrative poem. Inspired by John Keats’ long narrative poem, Lamia, it tells a story set in ancient times when dragons and humans were at peace. Click on the numbers below to reach other sections, or go to the Categories box to the right under The Dragon Epic. Click on 1 to go to the beginning and read forward. Go to 18 to read the installment before this one. Go to 20 to read the next section of the epic.

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June 1, 2012 · 7:04 am

18. Touching a Dragon’s Mind

Inside the cottage Ruanne sat as sunrise
Beside her loom and rocked the rocking chair
So slightly that it hardly seemed to move.
Old Broar and Reestor sat beside her waiting,
Their nervousness at weirdness burned
Into their eyes and drawn, pale hunter’s faces.
Ruanne let thoughts drift outward, fleeing light
Toward the mountains rising in the west.
The only time she’d let her thoughts drift west
Was when she’d been distracted or was close
To sleep and inbetween awake and sleep.
For years she’d forced her mind to shy away
From songs vibrating deep inside her bones.

As morning light intensified and spread
Across her flagstone floor, she saw Crayllon,
The witch, stare at the villagers as one,
And then another, picked up heavy stones
And threw them at her and her tiny child
Who wailed despair at rage and cruelty.

Crayllon had stood her ground, disheveled, rage
Distorting who she was, and held the girl
Behind her plain black skirts as she was hit
And bloodied on her arm and then her face.
Her husband newly dead, accused of forcing
A man who’d loved her all her life to die,
She’d stood as silent as the stones that bruised
Her flesh and spirit, cut her off from people
She’d lived with all her life. Her witchery,
Inherited from parents who helped to end
The wars for Clayton through their dragon-talking,
An evil that the village could not tolerate.
Grim words had sealed her fate through innuendo.
This even though her husband’s wounds had come
From dire wolves chanced upon while hunting goats.

He was too strong to die, his kin had said,
Their grief as bitter as their lives had been.
His wife had caused his death. She was a witch.
She had to die, and so they’d used their tongues
To brew a storm that led to men with stones
Hurled with excitement at a woman, child,
Themselves, their fears, the village’s ruined heart.

Inside her trance Ruanne lost where she was.
Her vision burned into her young child’s mind.
She’d never be a witch, she thought. Not her.
She’d be a village woman safe from stones.
Old Broar had been the one that stopped the madness.
He’d stepped between the witch and grinning men
And made them hesitate and told the witch
To leave, to save her child, to keep the village
From doing what would stain its spirit black,
And somehow, standing there, he’d backed the men
And women spreading lies into retreat
And let Crayllon flee to the mountain peaks.

She startled in the rocking chair. Chills ran
Along her arms and made her want to flee
Away from chaos pounding in her head.
The dragon song she’d felt before had throbbed
With harmonies that shimmered, colored dancing.
Fear, rage, regret, intensity, confusion,
Cold calculation, desperation stopped
Her rocking, made her rigid as a spire
Of stone shot up into a storming sky.

Old Broar and Reestor felt the storm she faced
And blanched, their fears alive inside of them.
Their bodies made them want to get up, flee
Into the wilderness away from what
Was pummeling Ruanne, assailing her.
They had to reach into their deepest selves
To sit and watch their young friend face her storm.

An ancient spirit felt Ruanne and stared
Into a human that she’d never thought would brave
The huge immensities inside her mind.
Ruanne felt fear rise up as if a stream
Had overflowed its banks and swept all life
Before it as it dominated earth.
The dragon seized control of who she was
And forced herself to calm and said inside
Herself, “We do not want another war.”

And then Ruanne saw where a long, dark ridge
Rose out of endless fields of drifted snow
And saw Ruarther by a fire, his face
So hideous with burns from dragon fire
She cried out in the silent room and made
The two men get up from their chairs, their hearts
Contesting wills to keep them in the cottage.

The dragons’ calm washed through Ruanne and let
Her feel herself again. She looked at Reestor,
Despair at what she’d seen so strong and urgent
She dropped the dragon song and felt a panic
That seemed to make her life irrelevant.
Her eyes were raw with tears streaked down her cheeks.

“Ruarther’s burned by dragon fire,” she said.
“The war’s begun. He made the war he wanted,
And soon its fires will sweep out of the caves.”

Old Broar looked at her frightened eyes and forced
Himself to smile. “You touched a dragon’s mind,”
He said. “You didn’t die. We have a way
Of telling them we do not want more war.”

Grim, Reestor moved and took Ruanne into his arms.

“We’ll find him. He won’t die out there,” he said.

Ruanne’s eyes filled with tears. “I love him. Damned,”
She said. “I love him even though he’s crazy,
Concocting senselessness endangering
The people that he thinks his deeds protects.”

Outside the children started shouting, laughing
As morning started up life’s old routines.

To listen to this section click on Touching a Dragon’s Mind.

Note: This is the eighteenth installment of a long narrative poem. Inspired by John Keats’ long narrative poem, Lamia, it tells a story set in ancient times when dragons and humans were at peace. Click on the numbers below to reach other sections, or go to the Categories box to the right under The Dragon Epic. Click on 1 to go to the beginning and read forward. Go to 17 to read the installment before this one. Click 19 for the following section.

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May 23, 2012 · 6:13 am

17. The Meeting of Wei and Ssruanne

an epic poem by Thomas Davis

I

Inside her dream Wei flew through skies so blue
They seemed to vibrate with a pulsing life—

And then she was awake, the fire stoked down,
Air frigid, dark intense, more night than night.
Her mother, gleaming, sat upon her bed
And seemed to look at worlds Wei could not see.
Wei huddled in the covers, warm, content
To see her mother in her life again,
But then her mother sensed she was awake
And stood, light streaming from her sudden movement.
Her mother did not speak, but stared at her.
Behind her mother in the faint blue haze,
Vague, other figures huddled, eyes unfocused.

Wei carefully sat up, the covers clutched
Beneath her chin, her heartbeats in her ears.
Her mother waved her arm. The room’s deep cold
Seemed colder still. Wei stared, afraid.
Each time she’d seen her mother in the room
She’d not felt fear, but now a warmth spread over
Her trembling body, banishing the cold,
And in the warmth she felt as if she’d lost
The little girl she was and found a self
Not made at birth, but forged from hands that waved
A spectral light into the night’s cold dark.
She felt as if she tottered on a cliff
Above a canyon plunging down sheer walls
Toward the River Lethe far below.
Entranced, she slid from covers, stood up straight,
Heart larger than her heart had ever been.

II

While moving from the conclave cavern out
Into the tunnel leading to her cave,
Ssuranne felt warmth beneath her scales, a strangeness.
She stopped and felt the geas come over her,
This time so powerful it seemed to seize
Control of who she was. What now? She asked,
Her two hearts struggling against the power
That flooded deep into her brain and made
Her want to leap into the air and fly toward
The human girl’s small cottage in the dark.

She felt the witch inside the tunnel with her.
In irritation at the urgency
She felt, she forced her legs to root themselves
Into the tunnel’s floor, her exercise
Of dragon will a force against the geas.

The dragon race was fading everywhere,
But here inside the mountain, where the peace
They’d forged had held a hundred years and let
Them build community now threatened by
Sshruunak’s rage brought about by how the geas
Had shot into the conclave’s fear, they’d thrived.
What madness shattered through a dragon’s will?
The dragons’ rage had violated peace.
The dragons’ center was disintegrating,
The evolution that had caused a burst
Of eggs and dragonets now close to failing.
She felt the sadness dragging Mmirimann
Back to his cave, the sense he felt at having
His greatest triumph turn to bitter ash.

What should she do? She asked herself. The geas
Was like a cloud that danced with lightning bolts,
So powerful it took away her strength.
She was no human who the spirit world
Could enter, forcing her to do its will.
At last she sighed. She walked toward the ledge.

III

Unwilling, Wei walked haltingly toward
The cottage door. She was not dressed for cold,
But as her mother moved her spectral arms
And light danced in the darkness, warmth surrounded
Her body, forced the winter cold away.
Beside the door she glanced back at her mother.
Her father, fainter than her mother’s form,
Stood just behind the light her mother cast,
The love the two of them had felt in life
Now emanating out toward their daughter.
Without a thought she opened up the door
And walked onto the path she’d made with light
Into the drifts of snow and looked toward
The mountains and the night’s black, bitter skies.

IV

The Old One sent a stream of steady flame
To clear a circle by the human girl
And flared her golden wings and touched the ground.
She felt the changing of the world she’d known,
The keening of a dragon as they fought for life
Against a horde of tiny men that shot
Their arrows further than they’d ever shot—
Their triumph singing songs of dragon death.
She felt the girl’s bright eyes, as calm as water
On pools without a breath of wind, sweep over
Her, soaking up her spirit, seeing past
Her scales into the beating of her hearts.

“You’re Wei,” she said, her voice surprising her.
The girl kept staring, drawing strength and power
From where her mother stood beside her bed.

“Ssuranne,” the young girl said, “your name’s Ssuranne.”
She sounded awed, as if she could not grasp
That she was standing in the winter snow
Without a coat or boots and hearing words
Said by a dragon only seen in skies.

The geas collapsed. Ssuranne felt free, but stood
Her ground. What did the young girl want? What caused
Her mother’s spirit’s restlessness and power?

V

Wei did not move, but stared, eyes soaking
Ssruanne into her memories and self.
The golden scale she’d burned into her arm
Pulsed hot and made her feel her blood spin back
Into a time when humans’ ancient power
Flowed through their flesh, their minds, their deepest selves.

VI

The girl’s eyes stopped their searching, glanced at ground.
Ssruanne looked at the girl and saw the dragon
Inside the storm of spirits in Wei’s spirit.
There’s something new upon the earth, she thought,
And with the thought she seemed to hear a chant
That flooded her with hope and dreams and love.
Fear coursed into her blood and made her feel
As if the human girl was part of her,
As if the penetrating eyes saw cells
Inside her body like they saw her scales.
She tore her eyes away from Wei and looked
Toward where dawn was brewing early day.

She spread her wings and lifted from the ground.

To hear an oral reading of the poem, click The Meeting of Wei and Ssruanne

Note: This is the seventeenth installment of a long narrative poem. Inspired by John Keats’ long narrative poem, Lamia, it tells a story set in ancient times when dragons and humans were at peace. Click on the numbers below to reach other sections, or go to the Categories box to the right under The Dragon Epic. Click on 1 to go to the beginning and read forward. Go to 16 to read the installment before this one; 18 to read the next installment,

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May 11, 2012 · 6:07 am

16. Separation in the Wilderness

an epic poem by Thomas Davis

His stupefaction, as he sat in snow
Beside the boulder as his pain seared skin,
Kept him from seeing Cragdon packing up
To struggle back the way they’d come across
The treachery of fields of blinding snow.

“I’m leaving now,” the young man said, his face
A mask of pain where dragon’s fire had burned
His arm and side. “I’m done. I’m going home.”

Ruarther, from his seat, looked up and stared
Into the young man’s bleary-looking eyes.

“You’ve lost your mind,” he said. “We’re injured bad.
Until we’ve got our hurts controlled, the village
Is just a dream you’ll never reach alive.”

The pre-dawn cold was hinting at the light
Now filtering along the eastern ridges.

“I knew I’d have to go alone,” the young man said.
“You’re crazy. Why I followed you out here
Is something that I’ll never understand.”

“The witch’s child has stirred the dragons up,”
Ruarther growled. “You’re suffering from burns
Inflicted by a dragon hurtling
From skies without a reason made by us.”

“Perhaps it read our minds and gave us warning
That murdering a child is not the way
To keep the human, dragon peace,” he said.
“I’ll send the hunters out with fresh supplies.
You’ll have to keep alive until you’re found.”

Ruarther looked inside the raging self
That seemed to boil with pain and anger branded
So deep it was the substance of his life.
He growled again, but did not say a word.

As Cragdon looked at him, the man he’d seen
As better than a man could ever be,
His hero since he’d been a child who’d hung
Upon the village’s stone wall to watch
For hunters coming from the woods, their game
On tripods made of fresh-cut branches roped
Around their hips, or slung on massive shoulders,
And wondered why he’d failed to see the truth.
The grim, dark man who leaned against the boulder
Was not a village man, but bound
To raving spirit beasts whose sentience
Danced chaos born from rage into the world.
He shook his head and looked toward the slopes
That angled down toward the only place
He really cared about inside the world.

“I’m going now,” he said. The snow shined brightly
As sunrise danced with sky fire as it crept
Across the treacherous, white miles of crust.
He wondered if he had the strength to make
It to his wife and child, the life he loved.
He briefly wondered where the dragon was.
It too was facing weeks of burning pain.
He shook his head, then moved out from the ridge.

Ruarther failed to hear, or see, when Cragdon
Began his journey home. He fought to block
His pain from consciousness and tried to focus
Upon the task of finding peace again
By murdering the witch’s child and letting dragons
Go back to living in their caves away
From hunters and their villages and homes.
He tried to see the child’s unnatural eyes
And wondered how a witch with minor skills
Could birth a witch so powerful her strings
Turned dragons into puppets of her will.

He felt the golden dragon’s whirling eyes
Confront him, heard the power in her voice,
But when he looked around to see her body,
The wilderness and sky were empty, vast
Beyond imagination, fevers wrapped
Around him like a fire inside his flesh.
He cupped snow in his hands and spread its cold
Upon his burns and coughed deep in his lungs.
He wondered if he’d be alive when dawn
Lit up the sky again and wheeled another day.

But then he knew: He’d kill the witch’s child.
He’d give Ruanne the peace his love deserved.
He’d let the dragons settle back into their lives.

He forced himself onto his feet and put
More wood to burn upon the dying fire.

Click to hear an audio of this section: Separation in the Wilderness

Note: This is the sixteenth installment of a long narrative poem. Inspired by John Keats’ long narrative poem, Lamia, it tells a story set in ancient times when dragons and humans were at peace. Click on the numbers below to reach other sections, or go to the Categories box to the right under The Dragon Epic. Click on 1 to go to the beginning and read forward. Go to 15 to read the installment before this one. Click on 17 to go to the next installment.

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