I.

Great King Arthur dreamed this dream 

On a grim and quiet May night

For this Sabbath day we celebrate

The Holy Trinity for it is our rite

King Arthur dreamed this dream

In sweet repose, glad and serene

Mordred and army close to his bed

Worry in his throat for tomorrow’s scene 

Upon a chaflet* there was a seat

Shining and bright of silver

Fast to a wheel rich and sweet

Of red and gold encircling over

Rubies, gems rare and fine

Menacing and great 

Amid large plated spokes had aligned

Dizzying color that causes man to examine his fate**

King Arthur dreamed he sat there

Clothed in gold and ample ease

Among the stones, pearls, baubles fair

No threat in sight, nothing in the spring breeze

Yet his mind urged him thus

Hell as black water was rising to his feet

Within this pool, foul animals sang and fussed

Horrible hymns of his death, him on this silver seat  

What was once a fine throne for a King

Now turned as wheels often do

Upside down the Great Arthur hung and lingered 

Those hellish creatures from that pool came through

Snakes, maggots and such beasts all

To his limbs they clung, filthy and putrid 

Great King Arthur dreamed a nightmarish fall

But more was to come, haunting and elusive

II.

Great King Arthur dreamed a dream

That woke him screaming and in terror

For unknowing where was he so close to Salisbury

The battle with Mordred and army ever nearer

Great King Arthur didn’t dream a dream

In the veil betwixt sleep and vigilance

Much of God’s message to Constantine

But there was no hope, no sign of brilliance**

At the foot of his bed, nephew Gawain

Appeared unto him in white and gold

With a group of maidens dressed much the same 

To his kinsman he nodded and spoke

‘My sister’s son! I believed you dead

Yet I see you much alive, thanks to God

Who are these ladies that come to my bed

Why do you come to me from heaven-abroad?’

‘Sir and Uncle,’ spoke one of his best knights,

‘These be ladies I have once championed

And for whom I fought for then to their last rites,

God has given them grace for what had happened

By help of me and to bring them unto you.

I warn you of your death, Dear Uncle,

God has given me leave to speak true.

There is no doubt many will to their deaths tumble.

‘I come not only to warn you of your death

But also to explain that a treaty must be made

For Lancelot, who, after your last breath,

With all his knights will return as he was bade

To respect where I lie and rescue you.

He will slay all Sir Mordred’s men

Who will remain thus,’ With a nod, he escaped to

The Almighty once more leaving his kin

Great King Arthur awoke from no dream

But called to his men to tell of all that was said

For a treaty was to be made there in Salisbury

To Mordred of any lands and goods if he be not dead

Yet Great King Arthur felt death nearing 

The dream and vision looming over him

Yet as the fourteen and himself entered the clearing 

‘I am glad that this is done’ he spoke, grazing Excalibur at the rim

Mostly taken from Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur

*Chaflet = “platform, raised seat”

** This stanza is mostly taken from the Valerie Krishna translation of The Alliterative Morte Arthur which goes into this dream in greater detail. 

*** The night before The Battle of Milvian Bridge against Maxentius, Constantine I had a dream that seemed to come from God to “delineate the heavenly sign on the shields of his soldiers” (On the Deaths of Persecutors 44.5). He was victorious. (wikipedia.com)

I take God to record

While breath still waves in my body

Am I not an earthly woman?

Why should I not think these thoughts?

A clean woman I was birthed and

A clean woman I shall die

Returning to a God to whom I swear

Constant faith and love upon

As he will never love me. 

“Unto all ladies I speak with this ink

For my soul ye pray

For my soul bury me”

I take God to record

While blood still sighs in my veins

Do I not offend?

May I be granted the gates of Heaven?

A true woman I remain and

A true woman I fortify

Curing my good knight for all those days

Of his wounds and sickness

But he will never love me

“My gracious knight

Now death made us two at debate

For your love and your lover”

While this fever of love churns within me

The smoothest sendal* and fine kirtle**

Will surround this dying body and

Upon the Temese*** I shall float

Black and waving this barget****

With letter in hand

And you, Lancelot, shall have my body

If you will not have my love

Taken from Malory’s “Le Morte d’Arthur” “Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere” 

*“A very fine silk” (Glossary of medieval words, http://thescriptorium.co.uk/glossary.php)

**“A long gown or dress” (Glossary of medieval words, http://thescriptorium.co.uk/glossary.php)

***Middle English for the River Thames

**** Barge, boat

I. 

Within this world, there is enchantment, but where there is this enchantment there is the elements of land, sky 

and sea that centers us within the natural outside we are blessed with. And within these elements, there exists 

the magic of the Otherworld, which like the fae and the legends, teases the elements neither good-naturedly or with black magic, yet exists alongside this earth we remain in the present to. And within the magic 

that the Otherworld and this world we live in, there are the humans susceptible to this allure -- blessed poets and Bards -- for in them we inspire others to believe in awen, blessed inspiration.

II.

Knowing Arawn stands safe at the gateway of Annwn

Which swings back and forth, then forth to only back once more

Much like all things of human and nature’s cause follow itself into a circle

And in his state of guarding the Otherworld

We believe this to be consistent

We affirm to be aware of what happens within the three elements

In their circling trail

Yet if the trail winds out of its course

Story begins as does verse

Who are we to believe it to be other than

The otherworld

Whose gates and the thinning veil intersects

With our world whenever they please, what else but magic

Occurs, as magic often ties with verse

The fantasy of existence

Consider beyond the endless boundaries wider than the Mor Iwerddon*

Suppose natural earth-bound enchantment never dies

As Gods and Goddesses ebb and disperse only to evolve

The endless circle we fear may die out

Yet man is strong and resilient as we are naturally given

The Cerridwen*-blessed cauldron of awen from this belief

Winter doth his theme retrace

Sketching wispy lead against exalting paper

As trees begin to bend their backs

Under pressure of winter

Their brittling bones do crack

And winds hum through ice

Like creating music

No skeptic will hear

And snow, snow, snow

Gleaming the brush and stream

All the world is sparkling

We fall back and create angels

As people walk past in furs and hats

Clucking a typical winter discontent

Like creating music

No romantic will hear

Those waltzing flame-licked beads

And how they dance down upon proud cheeks

In rhythms hypnotic, in pulses swinging 

Ripping scars into your every surface

Shreds your hair into threads of fiber

Muscles and nerves into ecstasy

Skin to obedient leather

Cotton from the clothes once worn

Unraveled into yarn and fiber around your feet

You are naked 

Stripped to fire-worn skin

Unrelenting in their dance

You are fire

Pulsing and waving to a carnal rhythm

That all has forgotten 

And condemned

What segregates, punctuates

Blindingly compares to a simple thought

A simple glowing moon like priestesses

Singing hymns, glittering flecks of questions

Teaching gospels and creeds

Philosophizing,  projecting

“What is holy verse?”

Or rather, what is the context of this

Holy writ molded in one’s fingers

As flowers and pagan alters die

The ambient sacrificed herself

Verse is deflection, that Sapphic fleeting

A freesia blossom, you who dance in mid-air

Distilling, arousing a spiritual being  

Those of the earth often feel within body

Oak trees, sensuous images 

Tucked in intent

And releasing the scent onto paper, 

It comes out as words

Ridiculous floral adjectives and metaphors

Willing victims to harsh modernity’s abuse

And deflection is a stanza

Language written in pallid mirrors

You are pink fog

Glowing through a late afternoon sky

Where gray clouds await their winter

Lacing eager coils through your color

Through your rusted and dusty lavender

But like all futile yet frank demons

With a dire quest of burning your ashes

It is all but transition

Shifting light over the peppered ground

Of reds and oranges, browns and yellows

You learn of death but not as a final thing

A harvest moon both wanes and waxes

Sleep, King Pellam[1], sleep

Between the spear and graal[2]

On that bed rich and deep

Eternal rest so that injury may fall

To the gallant knight of purity[3]

Who shall loosen this profanity

Sleep, King of Listineise, rest

Sure of the Two Bladed Knight’s[4] fate

Slayed by a brother’s hand lest

What disfavoured knights do rate

And revenge there adorned

For Garlon[5], another son shall be born

1. King Pellam is Thomas Malory’s equivalent to The Fisher King, May have been taken from The 

Vulgate-Post Vulgate Cycles “Pellehan”

2.  Or Grail. Old French.

3.  Galahad, son of Lancelot and Elaine of Corbenic, King Pellam’s daughter

4. Balin, who kills Sir Pellam in defense when it is discovered Balin killed his “invisible” brother, Garlon5.  Sir Pellam’s brother

All that is shadows

The lavender and gray

Margins and the fill

There is a solace in the in-between

There is a phantasm in beauty

And all reference and definition lies

In iron-clad science 

Singing in rigidity 

But there is no burden in the adverse

As my Otherworld often bends and yields

Resulting in a faith of duality

So please, take my hand and body

Take all that is both the margins and the fill

For they all are not a strain but happy demons

Shaped and molded in gray lines and self assertion

Ebbed lips softly wane from tears

To a peaceful melancholy

And in breath tipped and stained

Of ink and rain

She dries on flame-licked papyrus

Draped in obvious riddles

Of a burning pagan universe 

Contentious is the man washed in pine

Bright and deep as Viridios[2]

Honorable spring God mine

Who moves the winter snow

To grasses fresh in the pagan field

Testing limits where they stop or yield

Though this punishment you might find

Removed from the Bear’s fellowship

You shall be reborn in this jaded vine

Tied by fortuity into a certain relationship

With my nephew, strength and valor true

For his great knight quest is long overdue

He sits left of the Queen’s favor

Complacent for her love and devotion

But white Gwehwyfar is a Christian danger

And whispers into her husband’s ear these notions

While across the pagan field it is known I hate her

But she will be the cause of possible political failure

He sits left of the suckling teat of safety

But brave is my sister’s son, proud and honest

Challenge him with your axe and melee

And he shall be ripped from the Queen’s breast

Though he be valiant but hiding

Go now, Sir Bercilak and do my bidding

Do not find me absurd

For the greatest of preferences

As poetry is the ultimate mirror

Reflecting all angles

Soft or harsh

At one’s likes and values

Speak an erratic verse as you will

As modern, flourishing or within,

Beating rhythms of breathy interest

Spoken with a proud gusto

Or on a page passive and sweeping

Inspired by personal intuition

If spoken is but whispered

Back into the stirring divine

Yet you know you and I only mine

Let us depart on the kindest of terms

To our different angles on the mirror of verse

Words, you who

Bubble and spin like a naiad’s

Cool and arousing gills

Relieved by an ancient spring

Cascading silver, a shimmer

Piercing like waves under

Intimate and proud skin

That spins and turns selfish

Words that

Are never good enough

But to dress you, riddle you

Against a blinking page

Causes gills to sigh flexing

Silken flesh ecstatic

Lavender shaded surrender

For she who spins riddles into

Words that

Sing from pages and hymns

From lovingly worn leather

Bound by the musk of ink

Spelling and etching

Fatal golden images finds

The willing mind relieving

My pain yet my reason to exist

Deep blue midnight

Is the poet’s only solace

As words tumble

Helplessly, hopelessly

Out of one’s fingers

Driven and enslaved

By Ceridwen’s bright

Cauldron of verse and lyric

That, within humility,

Disperses or brightens

A deep blue midnight

As the forced mute often

Cannot find words

During daylight

And before sleep,

Like balming lullabies,

Words come humming

Somewhere in or beyond

A deep blue midnight

Whether with or without

Certainty who in her

Silver sparkling dress

Of stars blesses a room

With a poem’s scent

And itching fingers must

Cite extremes

Of beauty or anguish

Resulting in the elevated soul

Giving into an illustrious

Deep blue midnight

Speak of roses

whose buds softly seal

like eyelashes dulling dense

bead by bead

but it is not defeat.

For where chagrin links

her jeweled chains

therein lies baubles brighter

than any rose could fashion

in her late summer honor.

And within this darkness

where all colors meld

both vivid and pale,

speaking of roses

blossoms, hyacinths, tulips

seizes the senses of

a beauty beyond

yet dwelling within

evoking a place

where divinity and rapture

merges and sifts.

Shape, you are shape

Without body or breath

Yet you are familiar

Shaded cindering purples

Reflecting onto mournful bed sheets

And you, but who are you

To open lips to the greatest conversation

But it is familiar, distinct

Unfortunate visual connection

That binds a human to another

And smiles, you smile

But what moves that

Space between vein and bone

Within your body, your shape

That I naturally gravitate towards

Tangling and entwining

Are effortless watery beads

Blessed in crystal

Clear eyed adoration for

The poetry of rain drops

So they drop in pulses, in tempos

In meter, staccato or accent

Within fitful rhythms

Tumbling and toppling

With a tap swaying or waving

To its natural short breath

Anxious, as it may be