The serpent comes
He fills the sky
A poisoned eclipse of silver-black scales
That eat sunlight and dreams
I wield a sword of summer dawn
A blade of starry wonderment
To rupture his foul heart
And restore the sun
But his coils are vast
And strangled my childhood
His hiss is a seismic scream of doubt
And shatters my fluttering hope
His mouth is a seductive pit where Death reclines upon a forked tongue
And beckons me to turn my neck
Every once in a while
The serpent rears high
A pillar of weeping rage
A trunk of acid anomie
That covers my whole horizon
I lunge in feral anguish
And heave gleaming Daybreak
But the weapon finds no target
It only draws him nearer
His venom burns my eyes with spiralling blindness
And rips apart my mind in a shower of frothing hatred
It swerves my hand
So the blows meant for him land on others
And then they're lethal
Bloody and boiling
And steeled with monstrous strength
The kind I can never aim at him
I'm meant to be the prince who kills the snake
It's written in the heavens
Just north of my name
Just south of Polaris
But it's hard to raise Daybreak in the middle of the night
When I see what he shows me
And hear what he whispers
And when my voice so clearly matches his
I'll fail myself and all the constellations
He'll devour me in the end
