betaphilings

“To change, you must face the dragon of your appetites with another dragon: the life-energy of the soul.” —Rumi

Recently, Oprah interviewed Stephanie Meyer, the gazillionaire author of the Twilight series. Meyer said that she got the idea for her book from a dream. She awoke one morning with a memory of a boy and a girl in a clearing. The image was crystal clear and lingered with her through the day, so she wrote it down and that scene became Chapter 13 of her first book.

A similar thing happened to me a few years ago. Right in the middle of May scoring, I awoke one morning with the vaguest memory of twin baby dragons. How my brain came up with a dream about dragons I do not know. I have never been the least bit interested in dragons. There is Puff from the song and Elliott from the movie and that is all I know.

The twin baby dragon memory lingered through the day as a sort of smear rather than a clear image. My fascination multiplied; I felt I was on the brink of some awareness that would link meaning to the dream.

I gave myself over to it fully, meaning I became emotionally hushed and mentally silent, which I cannot do easily and readily but I can do occasionally. Sometimes the trance-like quality of mindless scoring induces this quiet state.

The words “twin baby dragons” lazed around in my brain as I continued working. Later that day I began to become aware of another strange phenomenon as I got up for breaks and this and that. Six words began repeating themselves clearly: It is a sarry story mine. What’s interesting about this is the repetition, for one — the same six words over and over. We tend to notice repetition.

More noticeable, however, was the accent on the word “sorry.” The voice in my head was not saying sorry. It was saying sarry with a distinct Scottish brogue. Great, I thought. I have a Scottish voice in my head repeating, It is a sarry story mine. What am I to make of this?

Then the baby dragons would come to mind and I would find myself in a whale of a quandary trying to make meaning of baby dragons and a Scottish lyricist and score essays at the same time. Soon I came to realize that a poem wanted out.

My inner poet often prefers the stricture and structure of rhymed verse. There is a limiting aspect to rhyme that keeps me off the slippery slopes of free, unrestrained, anything-goes verse where I am vulnerable to a mild form of madness. My “Pinball Nation” poem is a good example of that. It’s a long, rollicking, free-verse poem set within the confines of a pinball machine but just a tad bit wicked crazy. I blame it on the pressures of grad school.

I logged off my work program, picked up a pen and paper and wrote, It is a sarry story mine. The next three lines appeared instantly. About a beast what eats her kind/And how I borne to be a twin/Kept me from meeting my sure end

There it was. A Scottish female dragon about to tell her tale. Such excitement! Droplets squeezed from a dream were appearing on a page. The first half of the poem fell out of me in about five minutes. I remember looking at my watch aghast. I diddled with the second half over the course of several hours.

I love this poem and the way it happened. “Why the Dragons Went Away” attempts to link the demise of the dragons to an ice age. Because dragons are allegorical, this becomes my first allegorical poem, significant because allegory is the highest form of make-believe. Aristotle claimed that allegorical thinking is the hallmark of genius.

No, I don’t think I’m a genius. I think we all have glimmers of genius that are somehow connected to imagination, dreams, and states of consciousness. Albert Einstein claimed that every major discovery he made came through a dream.

What follows is my little ballad about a baby dragon born in a dream, explaining why the dragons went away.

It is a sarry story mine

About a beast what eats her kind

And how I borne to be a twin

Kept me from meeting my sure end

It was a time they ate they younger

So’s to quelch they burnin hunger

Every season another born’d

Every birth a death not mourn’d

Tiny tidbits tease delight

The palette of a thing of fright

A monster mother she for sure

And for her appetite no cure

Except the tiny morsels flung

From twixt her loins onto her tongue

The times they were all full of frost

And little babes they could get lost

But lost to me I’d rather be

Than chomped upon and et by she

So slid I down the frosty slope

Onto the teat of an antelope

Who lay beside me night and day

And succored me till early May

When then my wings began to sprout

And I began to flit about

Unawares that a dragon mum

Was what I’d someday too become

And when the antelope told me this

I yelled aloud Such heinousness!

Yee gads ye gods! I’d rather tromp

With antelope than ever chomp

The babes I bear upon the high

No no! Not there — ye gods come nigh!

Let me Persillia Dragoness

Upon the ground to build my nest

And lie beneath a wingless beast

And on me babes refuse to feast

So days they come and finally

The dragon mums no more they be

Now babes have ground on which to play

And that’s why dragons went away

Lo on this ground are men what feast

Just like me mum on babes of beasts

They think they are the highest thing

When all they are is ground b’ings

They cannot fly like dragons soar

Nor ope they mouths and like us roar

They cannot run like antelope

Nor see in dark like cats do nope

They cannot speak without the word

As beasties do in every herde

They are a kind of lesser beast

For in this world counting us least

They has it wrong of course we know

We beasties do still run the show

While men and wem walks to and fro

Familiars flit, fly and flow

Ay taste for flesh is naught but ill

But men and wem they eat us still

Like dragon mums of long ago

When all there was was snow and snow

And so dragons no more they be

Alas our kind is safe and free

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 9:25 pm and is filed under My stories, My poems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.