Standing strong and sturdy like plated armor.
He wiped his tears to banish the somber.
As a knight he bent down on his knees.
Too young a boy for fights like these.
His mother lays frail too weak to speak.
This sad story seems way to meek.
Her life slipping day by day.
To something so mundane.
No dragons or seiges will befall their castle.
For nothing is left but an empty hassle.
What a cruel fate it had in store.
Could only shake you to its core.
Earthen motte mounds and bailey burg
Sludge strongholds severed for siege
Norman castles cut of stone surge
Vowed vassals, the lords of liege
Round refuge tower of ashlar
Lured strums of Celtic cither
While they tend to tiers of mortar
Howling high waters hither
Gemlike blades grassy shades of green
Sailing seas beckon smartly
Hair to partly pare ployed the teen
Pirate Queen awaits Bartley
Homeland hush weave no words but mum
Forum flouters of gainsay
Dark Lady of Doona they hum
Legend of the Blacksod Bay
Fortress chieftain forges her case
Ní Grace unbowed by Bingham
Royalty rises face to face
Let them lie Ó Máille clan
Lyrate luck of her Irish pride
Aside vassal villeins sought
Herstory harmonized resides,
‘pon castles cloaked earthen motte
my eyes glean a shape
in the lurid dark
I go for it through the cold
edge of night
my fingers touch mist
a memory flickers
unreliable as an old film
did the window face east or west
I cannot quite place the shadow
the mirror shows a face I know
the lines etched with years
yet the eyes peering back
hold a question I cannot answer
I reach for the tangible cup
its ceramic warmth steadying
a brief anchor in the soft drifts
I watch the dust motes dance
in a beam that isn't there
or maybe it is everywhere
we build lovely castles
of brick and glass
and then the walls begin to breathe
slowly
imperceptibly
turning to watercolour
perhaps reality is just
a shape we hold
in the mind
for duration of the breath
and when that breath eases out,
what structure remains
is only the echo
of believing.
The waves break at my ankles bucket in my hand. I picture what my life would be in a Castle made of sand. The view would be so pleasant, from the windows that I look. My Queen would have so many riches that of a story book. With dragons to protect her and all that she can dream. Eyes of darkest turquoise with a little touch of green. Her skins as soft as silk, teeth as white as pearls. Hair as long as the Castle walls with never ending curls. We’ll ride into the sunset saddles made of gold. Bodies ever so close oceans waters cold. All our dreams will soon be gone, washed away in the early dawn. My heart pours out for all to see. I dream of my Queen to be with me. Although alone I remain a man, my Queen and I walk hand and hand. I picture what my life would be in a Castle made of sand.
With the rocks they carelessly throw at us, we build our Castles; With the rocks we carelessly throw back, they build theirs...
My age exists in a vacuum,
A vacuum somewhere deep in my mind,
Where I cannot really access,
Unless I think deeply about it.
After 24 I think I stopped attaching to it.
I do my best
I work my hardest
I budget
I plan
I can take care of everything me
I take care of others as much as I can
But I still do it all like play
Like it really doesn't mean anything
Like I am still my parents child whom they are taking care of
Even though I take care of me
Adulting feels a lot like building castles in the sand
Against very strong currents
There is the raging sea
The promise of rain and thunder
And somehow it is already dusk
I try to suspend time at 24
Into this place
A place where my parents are grown but are still healthy
A place where my siblings are growing but they are still pure
And I am still growing
But I am still unadulterated
24 was that age,
The age that felt safe enough to just be,
Because I was still writing in pencil.
Andromedan castles
moat has little blue boats
servers are maidens joyed
white iris gardens
deep canyons
radars aimed
soft cadence
magnet minds
love balanced
Orion forts marbled
shining with platinum bands
armoured Galactics cruel
stone and steel makes head reel
bold barons
orlon vests
high pylons
canon shots
warring sons
______________________________
Long, wide, vast, high, dreadfully deep protective walls
Battlements, ramparts, bulwarks, and tower folders
Living quarters, arrow slits, gatehouses, and halls
Monstrous walls built as though with steel-alloy boulders
Water-filled deep massive moats to obstruct the foes
Bastions and merlons within majestic meadows
Forts and castles are mysteries of histories.
They are focal themes of bewildering stories.
When the turbulent times demolished my space
I built a fort to protect the inner sanctum,
created a captive cocoon of imposed isolation,
turned into a lone prisoner of my making.
When time came to travel to the sunset skyline
that defined the moments to be protected within
with the design of emotional epitome,
I was caught in the dichotomy of confusion,
whether to break the rampart or stay secluded within.
Hearing then the soliloquies of the soul
I broke the bastion of time’s siege
to travel to the citadel of your passion.
Before I walked the last mile
through the sequins of moonbeam
that knew the way to your heart,
I reached the shore of the sea of ecstasy
where counting the ebullient waves
I built the castle of quartz for you and me
to live in the fragility of dream.
It would be bedtime, and I’d rise
Risking the possibility of chastisement
By the mother who taught me, with her smiles
That my reading Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden
Every book in each collection – the Hardy Boys too
Wasn’t just a trait passed down to me, to her pleasure
It was a trait she, herself, had spread – a disease
If not verbally, then with each moment she’d spent
Turning pages, lingering amid chapters of inspired
Dreams and imaginations, wanderings
I’d come to accept as my heart’s blessing
And I’d rise, with the intent of going to my room
Where I’d keep a light beneath the quilts,
Consuming the words with a heart full of wonder,
A heart who would always see my own smiles
Reflected on pages filled with castles I’d hoped to build
Myself, and forts that found their way into my wishes
Mine is a heart filled with worlds that were not my own,
beneath the shadows of a warm quilt and sheets
who remember me… as that girl who found her home amid words
Hopes died knotted when dreams betrayed
and my spirit lay prone in my marrow.
My heart watched love fray until failed.
No muscle of emotional strength left
was even tentatively dream linked.
Now, jailed in my mind-built fortress
are desires deceptively pieced parts
that once tingled my anticipation.
Morning to night, heartbreak guards my
fort’s locked cells where starvation
gives no salvation to dark false posing.
For years, I fell atop love bruising gravel
yet I stayed glitter and tackle saddled
seeking soulmate love on the horizons.
All love I thought breathed genuine
was paradise deception had spliced.
For true love, I would have lived in a cabin,
dressed daily in inexpensive flannel
and felt no jealousy for those living
adorned in silk and loving in a castle.
When longings and reveries are captured
in moments of fantasy
As you gaze into a starry night
dreaming of crimson Knights and Castles
Wishing to be saved from the flames of dragons
and seeking visions of a lover with noble blood
Walking with you through a castle's keep
towards a garden of beauty
Where a rose is plucked and placed in your hand
as a treasured gift of romantic yearnings
Allowing your heart to drift away on clouds
into the heavens
As you are carried in the arms of a Knight
through the halls of the castle
where torches shine on the cobbled stones
to light the way to love's embracing call
These are the dreamings of your heart
and the romantic pagentry of your soul
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
we built them in closets with worn out bed sheets
and couch cushions heavy as boulders.
the flashlight’s beam cut through the dark,
a knight's sword, our citadel against bedtime.
the carpet was moat-water,
broomsticks and mops our armored steeds.
We drew maps on pizza box lids—
Here Be Dragons in red crayon,
Mom's vacuum sketched as a sea monster
with fangs of dust.
there were no stone towers, just laundry-basket turrets
and battlements of stacked books where
discarded milk crates became our thrones.
we knew the magic: how a blanket draped just so
could turn December drafts into mountain winds~
they stood until Monday, these cardboard kingdoms—
until recycling bins swallowed the ramparts whole,
leaving only carpet dents where dragons breathed.
And us—we still smelt of marker ink and dust already
scanning the garage for next Saturday's unconquered country.
Boys Forts
The boys would climb up,
taking toys and making noise,
into the tall trees.
Wearing funny hats,
yelling~ were their pants on fire?
we did laugh at them.
Girls Castles
Dining room table,
with long lace cloth was our spot,
under on the floor.
Dolls were everywhere,
tea and cookies were a treat,
we were princesses.
Stone castle forts fall,
their wet moats dry to parched dust
power mutes silent
yet tyrant's demand to rule
remains coiled in naked might
Drawbridge now unfolds
as policy, law, decree
the moat, a filter
controlling information
behind wall of secrecy
Fortress power stays
autocracy hewn in stone—
unbreachable walls
the moat of politicide
changing form, not its intent
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