and you and you and you

too soon, too soon, the eagle flew
while you were busy drawing down
the moon into those icy hands,
purchasing one-eyed wisdom
to crowd your poppied mind,
until you could no longer stand
but gently tumbled tousled thoughts
to fall asleep in twilight lands,
asleep in the laps of legends.

and, as you dreamt, a river of woe
washed over you and carried you down
to those blasted banks, where the rocking stone
could be toppled by the gentlest touch;
you stroked the smooth-skinned serpent's egg
and, though asleep, you cried real tears
for emotions that somehow eluded you,
and for the names of the faces
you seemed to remember
with a distant and palsied anxiety.

and you dreamt you wrote a mystic piece
where vague and shuffling demons danced;
where Odin cast aside his mask
and settled on your shoulders, round
a mammoth task:
a burden irredeemable - a lance;
a lance to bear in diamond jousts,
advancing through the teeth of fear
to seize that chance to win the soured prize.

Methusulah, with his long grey beard,
whispered in your sleeping ear
of fools and wise men, sons and daughters,
the Devil's love for holy water,
of a single, human footprint in the sand;
of the perils of duplicity,
the rigours of respectability,
of such passions as can tear apart a man.

and on the sharp infliction of
such sorrows' textured wounds, you woke
with knotted hair and eyes still chasing phantoms;
and even though the darkstream coursed
still dully in your veins, you spoke
of fields of blood and lonely Death's cold tantrums;
and lifelong cravings threatening to choke...
to strain and break the slenderest of throats.

with that distempered mind you reached
for lightless needles littering the floor;
and, as a stray dog to its vomit, warm,
to poisoned dreams did you return, once more.