The Roar of a Knight (part 1)

What valor, what splendor, what beauty springs to mind when I spoke their names. The knights who gleamed in the sunlight, rising high above crowds on towering steeds and in the night, the moon and all the heavenly bodies set them a glow, as if they themselves were stars, walking the earth. Was there any position more noble or any cause so great as theirs? In my mind, no. So, I became determined to join their ranks.
At the age of six I was adopted into a royal family. I became a prince. This noble position was given to me, I never earned it. This fact has followed me all my life, like my own shadow, reminding me there is a light around and it doesn't come from me. But with that thought, I watched the knights from my window and envied their glow. I would glow one day.
When they fastened me into armor, my armor, and when they bestowed a sword and shield, my sword and my shield, I felt no time had passed from when I was a boy looking out of my window, watching boys become knighted men. I glanced over my shoulder at the tower window, half expecting to see myself staring down at the procession, envious. When they titled me and caped me, I suddenly became a man in everyone's eyes but mine and I left the square, and then the town, and didn't stop till I was in the woods, completely alone save for my thoughts, whose feet kicked playfully in the pool in front of me. I stared at the ripples, each one a revelation of my present entrapment within boyhood. My mother's milk still clung to me and my face still bore a softness as a result. These thoughts battered the pool of my heart. I felt as though I could not yet call myself a man, and shame rose from the pool floor. I left the woods, resolved to be the man that I as a boy stared down at from my window, honor shimmering off the surface of his armor and inspiring any who dared, to come and step in his boots.
Perhaps this singular inspiration was what drove me those three years I spent fighting battles that seemed to have no end. Often times I was alone when a blade would be thrusted toward my heart, missing its mark only by a moment, and instead, would take a piece of flesh from my arm. I dispatched them quickly enough, but the attacks were quite frequent at that time and the scars from these attacks were adding up. Assassins seemed to drop from the sky to take my life and all because of the cape I wore. They didn't know me, nor did they know the inner turmoil I battled, that was constantly telling me I didn't deserve the position I held. The same position that made me worth the time in the eyes of these assassins. A knight was worth a good deal of money if one could produce their head on a platter to any of the groups who have, for some time, set themselves against us. Every knight learned how to stay just out of reach, though, and assassins had very little success making any profit from knight slaying. But still they tried, aiming particularly for the newer knights. It was a testing time in my life, but after a few years, it came to an end. The attacks on my life lessened and it was around the end of the third year from when I was first knighted, that I looked into a mirror and saw the foggy image of my face, carved into a man's face by blades and trials.
In retrospect, I'm sure that, without that tiring period of my life, I would not have been ready for the greatest challenge I had ever faced up to that point: winning the heart of a young princess. It is of this great adventure I write.

Dying Clockmaker

A time, a time,
When life was mine,
I tinkered with it,
And lickedy-split,
My last second ticked.
Each moment, each second had turned me gray
A minute was too much to let slip away.

My time, approaching too fast,
Breathing the last,
of my sighs and cries
Taking in with dim eyes
The results of labor and all I've left to say,
Like wallpaper are all the clocks I have on display.

While still cutting deeper the lines of my face with a rhythmic ticking sound,
They called out for a neighboring youth from his bed to come swiftly down.
Their faces marked with blood, have now stopped spinning.
Their voices cry a new song in place of their ticking.
An automatic carelessly dropped on the floor,
Left with the holes in the walls and the broken door
The only marks I left, thanks to the lead punched inside,
Now simply serve to tell the time I died.

A Drained Pool

I walked into the backyard, leaves crunching crisply beneath my feet. No one was around to witness my expedition; this thrilled me. I continued to round the house, which wasn't the size of most, casting a shadow over the block.

When I finally rounded the back corner I saw a pool, drained for the season. The scene stood in grand contrast to what I imagined would be behind the towering rustic structure that was the Lewis Mansion, whose stone masonry hearkened back to a time when structures were utilities second and art first. But the scene laid out before me could have been found behind any home in town. My vision of splendor faded with every passing moment my eyes remained open. The statues became non-existent, the towering, spiraling, trees became one tree, too close to the pool and practically bare of its leaves, and the fountain lit by colorful lights, spraying its contents, which could have been water, but looked more like the light's purest form spraying into the pool below, this image was replaced by the drained pool whose glory was drained out with it. Feeling, though, that this was the only thing of interest, I approached the pool.

Expecting to see the pool's cement floor, my eyes were taken a back by bright orange leaves and the golden blond hair of a girl, whose well bundled up form was laid out on top of them. Thoughtfully she stared into the blue above, while I couldn't bring my gaze off of the blues in her eyes. They suddenly flickered in my direction, winding me in a way I couldn't explain. She sat up slightly, a smile spreading across her face.
"Hey! What's your name?" she asked at precisely the same time the answer had left me.

Lion Heart

It’s strange how the night breaths words into my head,


So strong, so emotional, they pull me from my bed,

And I hear the quiet of the night screaming

As fantastic thoughts overwhelm my dreaming

Sleep escapes me when these overtake me

And this crazy voice wants me to let you see

The vivid images that run like cinemas, flowing with great exclamation

Flying to musical compilations up and down and through my imagination

I’m so sure you get me, I’m so happy you’re here,

I’m so funny when you’re laughing, I have no fear.

But this Passion like flames flows through my veins

And history with its hard lessons explains

I can only say so much before flames slip from my parted lips

Trying to warm your heart I burn you and you become a memory fading into wisps

Wisps of thought I’ll never see again

A wonderful time with a former friend

But this isn’t the end

The animal tears again, beat by beat, battering my chest open till passion bursts out of every seem

Roaring, raging and overwhelming the battlefield outside of me, bearing proof to the formerly unseen

Wrestle me down, mighty hands, till I’ve found a focal point for my passion

Send this lion to ravage, use these teeth to tear, for I am weary of inaction

This is who I am in the form of a simple story

Spelled out with riddles locked in allegory

The questions begin

When thinking of my sin

Lying among the lambs of your field

This place beckons for my instinct to yield

Dumb little lamb pushes her lovely face into my mane

I cannot lift a paw to you, and all my strength, to this aim, I drain

O Lamb, when I grin, see within, razors able to cut you down with a bite

When I rise, muscles tremble beneath my skin revealing power you couldn’t fight

My fiery roar cuts the heart of men and surely would shatter you

Why then do you trust me to act against my nature, why when you know all I can do?

Why Shepherd, do I remain when in a moment I could be slain?

You’d remove this stain and they’d be free of me, their bane

I asked why and the answer came

In the form of a wolf over a lamb that was slain

Slit eyes slid thin as rage built within

In an instant I was on him

An instant passed and it was the end

But still, my heart beats on, again and again

When will I see victory in the war waging on the world?

When can I see the plan that has been slowly unfurled?

Why was I made this way, to hold a lion’s heart

And to have such a seemingly small part?

Well who am I to call it small

For That Lamb Breathed Life And Now No Longer Breathes At All