'Will we lift the stones without being ready for the snake underneath?'
- John Moriarty
On the other side of the wound that is a reverse herald
there lies a dehydrated dragon on a bed of pennies
on the outskirts of a deserted city in ruins
whose crown has taken to conspiring with rust
undoing promethean metallurgical achievement
It is desolated and extinguished without purpose or pride
and its dragon talk is all huff, puff, and smoke screens
it has hung up its wings like a bird on an island without predators
forgetting that those wings were not for fleeing but for majestic pursuit
Not a single scale on its now soft body intimates at insurrection
which once had the chins of children quivering and warriors charmed
it could rouse pandemonium with a shadow that eclipsed the moon
if only it could remember that it once had Vesuvius for a heart
The fair maiden whose beauty once offered consolatory hope of braver times
has grown old in her youth and become despondent
she's given into Stockholm's and chains herself, willingly, up at night
on a diet of twelve pomegranate seeds a year, she knows no sun
The cat and the mouse no longer play the cat and mouse games that kept the globe spinning
he's dying and she's dying too passing what's left of their vitality between them
like the single eye and tooth the graiai shared or the needle between two junkies
they've grown grey with addiction of self-pity, who is chasing the dragon now?
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