The Final Dragon Hang your bright hopes and feel your foundation crumble all your bright future visions dimmed, like fading color photographs tears from an unending well your overreaching dreams of domesticity shattered falling full throttle into the hole in the bottle one swig a lifetimes worth of romance and true love I broke her heart like so much kindling over my knee, fed the flames of her remorse, her sadness higher, so high a lifetimes worth of tears couldn't put out the conflagration. She brandishes isolation as punishment for her demon child vents her bile at her hateful daughter's actions against another piece of straw flogged against her camel back breaking shoves her into the room, with shouts her daughter protests, argues still in the face of her petty crimes of disobedience, willfulness and destruction of being too young to understand that her feeble limbs are too small to strike back effectively The door closes. Silence, blessed and still. The mother breathes aloud her forbidden thoughts: I should have listened to them I should have listened to the abortionists and child beaters Sometimes I want to kill her You think I'm joking? a sidewise glance, then forward to the past: 32 hrs. in painful birthing was just a preview a glance at her emerged squalling face the worried faces saying: she'll be better later, when she's cleaned up, then as she flings toys and food: she'll be better when she's two then screaming for hours: she'll be better when she's four then age six: a laundry list of complaints: screaming for hours, smearing food on the couch, pulling the dog's tail, slamming her spread palm against the cold door to gain a dawn admission to the parental suite: her demands, her unending demands! Four former boyfriends sent packing Valises filled with disgust and exhaustion A mother cries hard, then less for each successive lover Then me A knight in blemished armour sent in to do battle Lured by something called beauty, called love Armed with a blunt, rusty sword, tattered chainmail, an aged pony, and only rudimentary instruction: "Swing left, right, up and down, for godssakes, try to hit something vital!" She's fire-breathing and stout In her prime, her element A raging storm surrounds She bathes me with her furnace breathe Tests me with her sharpened claws Tastes me with her tiny biting teeth I hit her with a few cursory blows Then realize she is tiny and weak Her size but a figment of my overactive imagination. I thought I was better than all the rest but like the others, I lay down my weapon, turn my back and walk, run I hear a great gnashing of teeth, a satisfied belch, then a belly chuckle Dragon-child: 5, heroes: none A siren's wail from her mother-lover a gasp, then all the tools of recovery: a hardening of the heart, a disavowal of all weak men, an alcoholic's run, then tears wagons are circled: friends, demon-child, farflung sibling and relatives She curses my name, hangs another ornament on her tree of shame, next to four others, each successive one a step lower Mine scrapes ground, leans crookedly, falls I've escaped into my stronghold of self-remorse, sadness and Independence, aloneness and...hope Hope for her and for me, and baby-won't-make-three for struggle and for love forsaken dashed hopes, and hearts-a-breakin' to strike a blow for True Love (whatever the hell that beast is) and run her to ground saying: "You've deceived yer last hero, sir, now for yer just desserts' A lance thrown through the Heart of Desire, beating fades, stops. Ding dong the bitch be dead! Love, the final dragon, is dead!