This is the final, two-hundred line product of my last few days. I love how it turned out. It absolutely surpasses everything I’ve ever written. If you have the time to read it, tell me what you think.
<b>Half-Creation</b>
<i>An Experiment in Imagery</i>
I half-awoke, and mists of hoary grey
Were murky-drifting across my vision.
I half-blinked, and formless clouds coalesced
Into a long-bearded gent in old robes,
Who bore a gnarléd staff and lucent wand.
“Why, 'tis Merlin himself!” I happily deemed.
“Merlin I am,” he spoke in timeless voice,
“And I will teach you how to half-create.”
He swept his arm across th’ effluvium.
“Magus! Hid’n creation poses for you.
Make in your own image, to your delight!”
The might of half-creation lay dormant
Till I, the esemplastic wizard, woke.
“Delight is too rare, upon mundane earth.
I shall do better, and personify
The hidden powers at work behind all things.
Rise up, powers, and show yourselves once again!”
The murk clarified, and the mist took form,
And chaos made an impotent retreat.
Merlin tapped his wand ‘gainst his chin in thought,
And the agéd sorcerer seemed t’ approve.
The powers of my dreams began to take shape.
Dark Eternal: the idea silently
Drifted upon my imagination.
An opaque dome of grey began to grow,
Till it enveloped the landscape entire.
Streaks of black light arced from the skies, and burst
Into gouts of shadow where’er they struck.
With colossal roar, the dome exploded,
Annihilating all things in darkness.
“They also call me Entropy,” a voice
Whispered soft from all directions at once.
“So long 's you know your master,” I replied.
Shinryuu, god of all the powers, roared
Clarion challenge across the oblivion.
Dragon-scales of jade lay 'pon his body,
And dragon-wings fanned out like rampant flames.
He breathed, and white lights flared all o’er the skies.
Colorless power gathered about the god.
“You shall be my agent of creation,
And reign in shining splendor,” I told him.
Shinryuu roared his glorious estate,
And plummeted across the primal night,
Shedding flares and trailing pyroclasms.
Gaia, the earth mother, merged from the clouds.
Fertile was her substance, vernal her air,
And living winds were felt to softly breeze
From her serene demeanor. Kind goddess!
“I grant you the power of life-creation
And sustenance. Abide in fruitful grace!”
Gaia’s wordless voice was pure melody,
Her slow and natural motions, harmony.
“Be consort to my agent, Shinryuu.
Eternal union of the creative
And living powers will govern creation.”
Jormungandr coiled on the depths in rage,
And battle-shrieked at the heavens afar.
Faintly-traced purpureal scales overlay
His fleshy might and lithe aquatic twists.
“Wyrm, you will be the terrestrial steward
Of Shinryuu, my celestial dragon.”
The serpentine deity spiralled under,
And soon a frothing vortex whirled the sea.
Jormungandr rose upon the center,
Turning circles in his sweeping whirlpool,
Shrieking challenge across the horizon.
Phoenix shed fiery plumage 'cross the skies,
And began her burning earthward spiral.
“Red bird, you are the soul of genius.
You will symbolize the passing ages.”
Mortal and immortal Phoenix glided
In circles, aloft the flagrant currents.
Merlin quietly spoke, “My endeavors, too,
Have guided me to love that fugitive bird.”
Phoenix descended o’er the horizon,
And evanescent feathers turned to ash.
A piercing cry of sacrifice repealed.
Juggernaut amassed from denser vapors.
The stone colossus needed no command:
That towering giant served Entropy alone,
Who heeded only the wizard-maker.
Its every step sent shockwaves through the earth,
And fractured the terrain beneath its feet.
Broad chasms opened into the abyss,
While rocks jarred loose, and fell into the pit.
Crumble, crumble, scatter, dissolve, it seemed
To silently voice. Echoes of footsteps
Drove the winds, and rapidly galed away.
Cherub and Seraph hung o’er the meadow,
Amid the fluffy layer of cirrus.
Horns of golden sheen sounded on their lips,
In endless fanfare to the creation,
Casting far their high-uplifting cadence.
“Trumpet to the creative victory!”
Unblemished wings of white slowly motioned,
And the angels swooped across the bare skies,
Soaring in formation loosely entwined.
“Even these insubstantial trumpeters
Shall be put to magnanimous purpose.”
“These insubstantial trumpeters, indeed!”
Merlin chuckled, and raised his wizened brows.
"Do not the songs of angels glorify
Th’ invisible forms that lie behind things,
Much like your esemplastic creation?
Do they not embody the Creator?
The words halted me. With slow wonderment,
I pondered that transcendental insight,
And the implications for my estate.
“Sing on, noble Cherub, gentle Seraph.
You also imitate the Eternal.”
Cockatrice, with feathers of dark rainbow,
A seething glance of petrification,
And the allure of mortal charisma,
Posed on the zephyr, and slowly revolved.
“Lethal seductress, your charm is unmatched,
Save by the all-inspiring earth-mother.
Warn not to ravish beauty with the eye,
But to glorify it within the mind.”
Merlin stared the bird in its acute eye.
“Beware, bird, to try your betters,” he said.
Blithely dismayed, the Cockatrice flapped off.
Einhorn reposed, her hoof lightly dipped
In a gurgling and umbrage-sheltered brook.
Encouched amid the deep forest creatures,
Beneath the denser foliage of jade,
The unicorn dwelt in hidden nature,
And healed the living of their tender wounds.
“Faithful servant of Gaia: e’er abide
In virgin innocence, and nature’s heart.”
Her pearly horn wound to a salient point,
And caught the gleam of sunlight on the tip.
Shoots of green quickened under her white hoof.
Mjolnir descended earthward on grey strips
Of nimbus, holding to reins of voltage.
Sky-colored robes cascaded over him;
A white beard of furious demeanor;
And sage grey eyes, accustomed to survey
The mobile expanses of the cosmos.
“Old Mjolnir, pontiff to the higher powers:
You shall have the wisdom of the ages,
And thunder it upon childlike crowds!”
The ancient raised his crackling staff aloft,
And his eyes bore the lightning-blaze of truth.
Loki tilted back his charred demon-horns,
And a conflagration swept amidst him.
Wisps of flame wildly scattered from his arms,
And beastly muscles ripped across his chest.
“Dear Loki, you describe the heart’s passion.
Wildfire creativity burns within!”
The hellspawn gave a guttural demon roar,
And a glorious anthem of raging flames,
Threw back his deep-scarred and tightly clenched arms,
And burst the dormant air about his frame
With echoing domes of live inferno.
Baldreh watched Loki’s bestial behavior
With frosty eyes and cooler countenance.
Lithe icicles lined her silvery hair,
And tinkled like bells at a slight motion.
An ice-mist formed at the wave of her hand,
And coldly extinguished Loki’s wild flames.
“Baldreh, you show the restraint of the mind,
And temper the demon to an angel.”
The ice goddess displayed no reaction,
But lay her milky-pale palms together,
And embraced the chill winds motionlessly.
Merlin, with faintly rueful eyes, admired
The divine and ever-hostile couple.
“Any child of theirs would certainly be
Patron to wizards and poets alike.
Alas, attempts at conjugal union
Would merely obliterate both of them.
We shall have to deal with them as they are.”
Loki’s fires intertwined with Baldreh’s ice
In a sublime mist, and from that concord,
An esemplastic river gently flowed;
And, ah!, has already seeped below ground.
Grendel shambled forward as would a beast.
Unnatural bestialities pocked him.
“A man aspires to be an animal,
And defecates upon his human soul.
Remain in such pathetic state, Grendel,
Till your plummet to the infernal pits.”
The monster numbed his shameful self-loathing
With violent rage, and madly swung his limbs.
He flexed his mighty, deforméd muscles–
Until he sensed true heroes in the mists.
At that, the goblin scrambled for his lair.
Arthur, who wielded fey Excalibur,
Slowly appeared amid the solemn mists.
Locks of daylit cast beneath a plain crown
Marked that restorer of the old order.
Stoic resolve described his countenance,
And noble aspirations curved his brow.
“<i>Verus rex!</i> Myths live on inside of us,
And who strives shall attain the eternal.”
The king of past and future saw Merlin,
And with a silent shimmer of the eye,
Hailed the one who taught him gentility.
Lancelot rose up from blither vapors,
And tossed his flaxon tresses o’er his back.
A dark blue cape rippled on his shoulders,
A simple broadsword slanted on his waist,
And his poise was glibly imperious.
That knight seemed a god among lesser men.
“Lancelot of the Lake, chevalier.
Genius ever fights the preordained.
You demonstrate the ideal,” I told him.
Courteously, he saluted his king,
And dreampt upon his next romantic quest.
“You flatter me and my old endeavors,”
Said Merlin, gazing on the cavaliers.
“Those two were always the ones I favored.
Who is the truer hero of the pair?
Ah, woe. I relinquished those endeavors,
When I found I was unable to choose.”
I responded, “I think I understand,
After extensive inward reflection.”
Merlin raised his hoary brow once again.
“Inward reflection, indeed. Yes, you do.”
He looked on his lucent wand for some time.