While perusing pictures at the Louvre
A dragon felt dismayed and moved
At how often they portrayed
When Saint George cruelly slayed.  
If claws could clutch brushes they’d reprove.

Raised by a pair of dragons
Dodging their huffs and puffs of smoke and fire
And if I accidentally step on their tail
I'll burn on my own fiery pyre

And I watch the others with their parents of rabbits
While I'm here, trying not to be burnt
And while I dodge these flames once more
I think about what could've been, was or weren't.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                   “A Dragon Has Just Flown Over the Treetops…”

                            “We must all show great constancy.”

                        -C. S. Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Dragons! They seem to land among us daily
Blotting out all happiness, all innocent joys
In appearance and demeanor ugly and scaly,
Suppressing silence through foul foolish noise

Dragons! They don’t like anything about who we are
Our words, our works, our walks, our dreams, our tunes,
Our happy memories of a long-ago star
Our lazy moments in barefoot afternoons

Dragons! They want to crush us in the end
But we’ve read the story – we always win

kissing girls:
she makes me feel so alive --
but i miss her funeral anyways
sleeping on my mountain of
burning gold and
empty graves.

leaving leftover tea
out in the car
as it rots and turns to
lukewarm longing.

kissing anyone  
i'll never learn
how to
breathe fire.

i'm nocturnal
but my eyes refuse
to adjust to
the dark.  

so i whisper poetry into
the silhouettes of
whoever will
have me.

i
cry to myself
cradling my skull
in ***** claws
that rip and tear
at everything
i try to
hold.

sleeping in
an empty bed,
i want to hold her
hand again.

i crawl out from
a ****** of pine trees
belly-deep in the tall-grass
where no one dares to wander
mistaking my echoing cries
a painful roaring sob
that reaches
out for the stars --
they think me furious
but i am only
             alone.

There are men (fair knights) who always get what they want.
If suddenly, Mr. Knight doesn’t get - say, a girl (the fair maiden) - he’s confused - what IS this, he wonders but he doesn’t KNOW. We will assume that getting this thing (girl in our example) is important to him.

Though his perceptual systems are still searching for answers he gets a sinking feeling because his limbic system reacts faster. It tells him something’s wrong - and it might be a predator (the dragon) so he starts sweating, he wasn’t prepared for a dragon - for chaos!

Why didn’t I get what I wanted, he will ask himself.
Maybe I’m not attractive? (That would be a horror of the 1st order)
Maybe this girl is trying to hurt me.. attack me? (the predator) - that may be a thought, but it’s unlikely and an unhealthy one.

Rejecting that he must ask himself questions: Did he come on too strong? Was he acting like a ****? Did he make too many assumptions? Am I well dressed? Did I shower today? (he smells his breath, checks himself in a mirror) He goes back over the encounter in his mind. Was he really trying his best?

If he decides, at this point, to go on, he must face his unrealized world in order to slay the dragon of chaos blocking him. The issue may be something outside of his normal, conceptual structure.

In that case, the problem is literally, the snake in the garden (his walled conceptual garden - his view of the world and his place in it).
Now this IS something - a snake in the garden - again he can give up - quit with this girl, quit trying period, quit dating, bathing, eating - that’s how the dragon can ****.

Failure is a message from the implicit world. The good news is - it’s a message from the real world and it may be a gift  - the best thing that ever happened to him. A slap that says: wake up, learn something, clue-in.

It can be a treasure, the gold that dragons hoard.

I failed to love round, but fallen flat,
My head slumps down, over an ancient map,
My eyes roll back, over the mappa mundi verge,
Where waterfalls purl, and the sea serpent-sleep lies curled.

i'd like to live in my mind
of fantasy lands
and overgrown worlds
bustling and shaking with life
in all forms
of giant snakes that zoom through the air
of witches and wizards in constant war
of golden knights and fair-headed dames
princesses wielding swords off to battle
and magic coursing through my veins
my blood is liquid dreams
and my heart beats to the melody of a lullabye
oh how i wish to live in my head
untouched by the grime of time
unburdened by the weight of my reality
unbroken
unburied.

in storybook endings ,
the princesses
found their princes.
The valiant heroes
chases away all the dragons.
The lost would find
their way home.
And people would find
what they've lost.
But then, whatever happened
to those who fell in love
with the dragons instead?
The damsels,
who became too comfortable
with their own distress?