All contents Copyright Alexander Gullett 2006-7. Theivery will be punished by fine and death. Whichever I can get first.
Guarded Dreams
Master of reaches vast, strange and wild, Dream,
your castle broods mysterious. The walls
shroud themselves before the eyes of mortals.
What do you hide within your sturdy vaults,
guarded behind the mask of truth and lies;
shielded by gates of horn and ivory?
Is it a truth gleaming like ivory
polished and set in the crowns of great dream
kings? Or a black and wicked hole of lies?
Is it humanity’s dreaming your walls
protect from the horrors that leap and vault
from the dark realms forbidden to mortals?
Lord, you reign over the peace of mortals
who rest secure on sheets of ivory.
Nightly, you must open the guarded vault
and send each innocent sleeper a dream
unsurpassed in beauty. However, walls
bar the schemers who would corrupt with lies.
At the heart of the dreaming your throne lies,
open to approach by not just mortals.
To your court, to wait outside solid walls
the supplicants come. The gates, ivory
and horn, give witness to strangers, High Dream,
who crave as well the secrets of your vaults.
All of these legion dreamers seek the vaults’
treasures. Grant to but one a boon: what lies
so heavily guarded and kept O Dream
lord? Choose one from this grand host of mortals
to visit those shadowed rooms. Ivory
will exclude others from ent’ring these walls.
Once inside these infinite conjured walls
what can be taken out of guarded vaults
without your permission? The ivory
gates permit only truth, the horn but lies
and none without your leave. Can one mortal
carry the burdensome secrets of dreams?
Can ivory truth or vilest black lies
Ever pass the walls of your unseen vaults
stolen by a mortal from the Lord Dream.
In the Company of Death
Where is that illustrious visage, dark
and uncannily hooded to my sight?
Liege of those who have passed life’s final test,
what abode do you rest in? What castle?
Under roofs of ebon, and onyx spans
sits the form of he who we call Lord Death.
You, O monarch of the afterlife, Death
of whom I have heard many close and dark
secrets, do I wish knowledge of the spans
your empire stretches. Are they past my sight?
Or perhaps the demesne of your castle
Are the soul limits. I propose a test:
Tell to me, Life Stealer, do you attest
that your sovereignty holds only death
to all mortals? Or from this vast castle
does more than one domain extend? What dark
dominion do you hold beyond my sight?
What jurisdictions do your powers span?
Patient though you may be, waiting life spans
for each fleeing soul, time my patience tests;
therefore, while you are sitting near, in sight
clouded by sleep and oblivion, Death
fix your will and reach out into the dark
abyssal realm, far beyond your castle.
Do your umbral clutches, in this castle
absolute and terrific, other spans
touch? Or does your final grip at these dark
Plutonian columns find their own test?
Into our lives you may reach foeman Death,
but after your cloak, nothing veils our sight.
Now, grim Reaper, you are fading from sight,
my question still unanswered. This castle
grows cloudy before my eyes. Is this death?
No, this ephemeral trestle which spans
our existences draws back. I protest!
You leave me questing alone in the dark!
These questions Death, about what your reach spans
I will answer. When next I sight your castle
this test will echo; will ring in the dark.
These two poems are examples of sestinas. They are very complex and difficult poetry to write, however I find the challenge stimulating. They follow a strict rhyme scheme and all lines must be in iambic pentameter.
Whigh Community Member 
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