Dragonlady"There's a dragon in my belly!"
hisses the wild-eyed woman with shaggy hair,
as she scratches at the iron bars
with long and blood red claws.
"They locked me up in here
-for my own good, they said!
Truth is I scare them witless!
They're afraid of what will happen
when my dragon finally breaks free!"
Ragged nails are dragged through long, tangled hair.
Her eyes glow, surely just a trick of the light,
pin-points of red fire deep inside them.
She grins and her teeth seem, oh, so sharp.
She speaks again and in her voice is
a faint whisper like scales slithering,
claws clicking, across a floor of stone.
"My dragon has been slumbering for years, you see,
but now it's rumbling and stirring in it's sleep;
it's stretching and flexing it's sinuous, powerful body.
I can feel its growing impatience
to break out of its narrow confinement.
It won't be long now!"
The madwoman throws back her head
and starts howling with laughter, triumphantly.
- And the sound of laughter rebounds, impossibly,
like the rumbling of distant thunder,
like the echo in a deep, dark cave...
© Darkamber 1991
Fallen angelBare-foot in the February snow
She stands alone on the bridge
Limbs like twigs
With a mind as easily broken
Her back and shoulders bent
As if she's trying to crawl into herself
She stares into the churning water
With eyes centuries old
And shadowed by old ghosts
Her mouth agape like a jagged wound
Open in a raw and voiceless scream
As her soul bleeds from vacant eyes
She tastes salt on cracked lips
And knows she's been turned into a statue
© Darkamber 1991
These are the two poems which were published in issue 13, in 1999, of
Visionary Tongue.
ETA:
"Fallen Angel" originally had two more lines:
If only she hadn't turned around
And looked back at the desolate ruinsI dropped these two lines when I submitted the poem to VT; at the time (in 1999) I thought the poem worked better without them.
I wonder now why I named the poem "Fallen Angel"; the image I had in my mind was that of Idis
[1], Lot's wife, who looked back on the destruction of Sodom, and was turned into a pillar of salt.
[1] Other versions of Lot's wife's name: Irit, Iris, Idit, Ildeth, Edith. 
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