The Serpent

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