She was an excited little thing
Always running around you
couldn't miss her. She would
Sneeze and the fire brigade would
come and douse her out she
Was a little fire *******.

She was always full of flare
The ones she shot in to the air,
Children loved her displays,
As they would shoot upon the
Heavens and explode into a
Million stars for moments the
sky was alive with fire.

She lit the heaters of the towns
Folk, to keep them warm in winter.
But she was so alone the last of
The little missus, who's flame
Always burnt brighter.

"Little miss fire hazard" grew majestic
And loved by towns folk and those
Lucky enough too meet her, but she
Passed as all things do, but too this
Day a flame still burns bright never
Does it flicker, it burns bright forever
More as generation down the line, the
Towns folk remember and *miss her.

Isolated in academics
To finish my final days
Honored with a chance to fly
To an Ancient World
For a journey unlike any other with friend
Of New and Old

We all gather to the skies
From points of two
Dependent on which part of the pan
We originated

Many seeing each other
In the flesh
For the first time
Immediately we become friends
Unified by simply excitement a nervousness
For something entirely new for all of us

We each gather for the skies
To wait six hours short of a day
To begin our journey
In the oldest of lands

Many of us resting
Some simply lying back
We talk among our members about our paths
Leading us to this point and where we hope it goes

We come closer to our destination
Excitement grows among tired minds
Our blood rushes through our veins for what is to come
As or passage in the sky suddenly changes and burns



To be extinguished by the salty cries of Ryūjin
And swallowed whole to gain passage to
a New World

The child screams as the beast draws near,
unable to run frozen in fear.
Pinning the boy to the ground with one claw,
then ripping him open he begins to maw.
A girl so fragile yet so brave,
draws the beasts attention with one small wave.
The beast lashes out with fiery breath
The girl cries out with the pain of death
People flee without success,
from the dragons murderous breath.
Soon there is nothing left to ****,
the village lays quiet desolate and still.
The beast waists nothing of his prey
He feeds until the end of day.
The rest he takes back to his weyr,
To feed his hatchlings waiting there.

© Crystal Erickson 1999

From the darkened depths of the shadows she rises,
swift as the wind flame bright.
Proud as a hawk embracing the moonlight,
glittering on her graceful form.
A creature of great mystery and majesty.
Beautiful, noble, valiant, and deadly.
Her silver voice can lure men to their doom.
Her brightly shining claws rend flesh and bone.
The same sculpted teeth that grace her smile,
Have charmed beasts into becoming her meal.
Even her eyes so full of lovely wisdom,
are a mesmerizing and enchanting trap.
Beware the perilous beauty of the dragon,
and even as you do ....surrender to it.

© Crystal Erickson

Harder and faster,
my heart pulls two ways,
harder and faster,
as nights turn to days,
shorter and steeper,
the dragons I've slayed,
rear their heads back to taunt me,
their sisters do haunt me,
as I stand in this mess I have made

When I was a little girl,
I watched my mother smoke,
I watched as it consumed her lungs, often causing her to choke
When I asked what it was, she told me it was Dragon fire
I believed her in a heart beat, Thinking it was magic of unattainable desire.

My mother was a dragon
She could breath fire, she could fly
Little did I know then, it was the dragon that caused her to die.

The black coal took over her lungs, the claws ripped at her throat,
As the dragon latched on, there was little hope.
Her wings grew weaker, as they became tattered and fragile
but my mother still drank in the toxic embers, it was her addictive desire.

As her breath began to falter, and her flame began to die,
Her candle blew out, now it was really her time to fly.

I was born into this world by a scared and tired mother, who'd been through every one of life worst pains.
Broken by every hitting and slashed up by every knife I could ever imagine.

A father who was naive and young, and didn't know much other than the fact that anyone and everyone different were to be hated.
A boy who was scared of complicated words and complicated people,
and only liked life behind the cover of dark glasses, until the day his voice was filled with so many voices I had to leave him for my mother who was blinded with pain.

I was suppose to be born into this world with a mother whose words were poetry, who would give me life lessons, who would sing to me in a harsh voice and give me tea on hard mornings.

I was supposed to be born into this world with a father who loved everyone, whose ex-lover was a man who had fought in a world war for his own country, betraying my father, for my father was of the enemy's blood. My father was supposed to be quiet. Only words he ever spoke, was reading out old literature to me on days were the moon was out.


Why did I have to be born with a mother who has had enough, and a father who doesn't know how to love me?

If I could have had the parents I was suppose to, I would be a woman of great knowledge,
who's beauty was strong in every word she spoke, who would've loved herself through every storm.

Yet here I am, knowing nothing except the things I've figured out for myself, or from my friends' mothers, even though my mother would have had stronger lessons to teach than any of theirs.

Here I am, shaking in every word I preach. Dumb sentences that comes out all the time, because I was taught that silence is unpleasant, and I should break it, with words of things I know, (which isn't much, and shall be repeated.)

Here I am, as weak as a young girl can possibly be at this time of night, hating myself as much as I must believe my mother hates herself.
Oscar Wilde once said that all men will be different from their fathers, and all women shall be like their mothers for that is our curse.
I repeat to myself not to be like her, to be a better woman, to be a better mother when I grow older, but how can I?

When she showed me to hate myself, and my dad showed me to hate everyone who isn't like him?

Yet here I am, loving everyone.
Rebelling everything my father told me, for he did not look out for me the slightest.
I still can't rebel against my mother, loving everyone but myself, looking at myself only as the monster in me, and not the other parts.
The parts that somehow still believe that there is a reason I am alive, and that there is a reason these people made me.

There is love, there is hope, there is faith and all these parts are behind this monster- this dragon.

This dragon that I though for so long could only be slayed by pretty boys with nice eyes. But I realize now that I am not a damsel in distress, and that i shall slay it myself. Slay all the self-hatred, all the ugliness and all evil.

A dragon I would not have had, had I have had the poetic mother and the quiet father.

I realize that no matter how much my parents had taught me,
no matter how great my parents had been,
no matter how many lessons and how many old books,
I still wouldn't have been a woman of great knowledge.

I wouldn't have had that knowledge, had I'd not been fighting for all these years, and many years more to come, because of my broken mother and my unloving father.

I think the only way to get to know as much as possible is to slay the dragon, every day, slay it until it bleeds and screams out in pain.
And to remember that the pretty boys won't hurt the dragon and make it disappear as much as you can.
And to remember that you can't always trust the pretty boys to not speak dragons tongue.
And live everyday
fighting it
until
the battle is won.

Which I believe
(deep down)
will happen one day.