Epic Poem (call for a collective project)

possibly, go back to Filmsnobs last line and work from there.

We contemplated whether to sell the rest of them or keep some of the women for ourselves.

The decision was made quickly and we were able to bestow honor and virtue on two girls of impeccable breed.

They clung to us, their fear of us overshadowed by the thought of remaining in their miserable state.

And with the chorus of lamentations behind us we continued forward hard hearted.

A Foreboding Thunderstorm called us to our appointed Route.

As lightning struck and took the life of a man and his horse, the word of the God rattled our bones.

Well we saw them as they entered the horizons deadly chord.
They went up in flames and appeared once more, larger to the eye.
Now they came running, with their spears ahead, horsed and deadly.
Many of us fell. The winter came to the heart of some and now
food was sparse.

A farm was robbed and the peasants were honored with mercy.
Our morale which had sunken began to lift with beer.
Outward on the ashen path of dusk the drunk wore out.
We knew our purpose lay bare to the heart but hidden to the eye.

The darkness gathered and we passed into an intermediate realm of time there-in.
Many of us had awoken, disturbed by the feral sirens of past hours.
Awoken too by our disconcerting fluttering of destiny, destiny to fill the space in the moonless sky.
Entranced by the stellar wind reflected off our eyes, no sleep, but dreams rather still.
Our fears thrown off into the outer veil, day break said goodbye to the restful, restless night.

One of the slave-women came toward me and was stopped by a guard.
He caught her by the neck, delicate like a swans, and smiled at her gasp.
I had him bring her to me and force her to her knees and let go.
When the guard was gone she looked up from the dusty soil and met my eye.
Her irises were turqouise but violent, the mark of a master-race.
She was not from this wilderness, I asked her her family tree.
Defiantly she stared and spat, not in my face for she valued her life
but on the ground and looked up and waited.

So I said fuck it and went to get a beer.

Um Smears, please go shit elsewhere.

[edit] well - let’s say this is your attempt at Epic lyricism… I suppose we can work around it.

My friend my long companion, through many wars, he of all people crept behind me holding a dagger glistening in the sunlight. The woman feigned not to notice him. Alas, he slew me, at first I knew not why, I layed on the ground, blood poring out my neck. Then I saw him help her up and I knew, sentimentality had got the better of him. Was it love or only a long estranged since of decorum that he had kept hidden from me? But, it mattered not his betrayal was complete. The final peice was when he kicked me aside as they left my presence without even enough regard to kill me quickly. I whispered, friend, if such is for me, then where does your loyality lie?

My only regret would have been not having recieved a proper burial, but as the wild dogs rushed towards me I knew that I would recieve a better by burial by them, in their dung heap, than by a friend such as him.

I just saw the edit, so Smears’ line was accepted into the poem? If so that character sure got his ass dragged out of the fire.

Wow, Smears - that was like divine intervention.
I just wrote this and only pressing submit I saw that there was this entry where the protagonist gets killed. What the hell.

The beer however had not been kept cold, and my chagrin was enhanced when I noticed that the guard was taking the woman to his tent. I halted him and handed him the stale beer. “Drink this!” I ordered, intending to take the woman for further questioning. There was little of intrigue this journey, and I keep to the surface of the few riddles that present themselves.

The guard now poured the beer into his throat and saluted a gaseous phrase. I nodded, and the woman looked on in dismay. She turned to face me and spoke: “You are wanderers, without soil or honor, you have no right to speak of family”. I praised the Gods and took her to the edge of the line of trees shielding us from the horizon. Perhaps we were closer to our purpose than we knew.

She then whispered to me, I am a seer, I have prophetic dreams, you were to be killed today, by whom I cannot say, but he was thwarted by some presence, some presence I cannot understand. But, now I recall, towards day break I had a vision I did not at first understand, a floating illshaped entity diverted a wild animal from its path. That illformed entity, that flat misshapen troll, he saved you! You are safe now from that threat. But, be weary, there are forces outside of this world that we cannot understand or hope to control.

this is turning into a story.

.

[size=150]Go on…[/size]

[size=50]
…[/size]

[size=50]…[/size][size=120]I like where this is going…[/size]

.

As her head moved rhythmically, the golden light from the sun across the steppes ahead of our army played through her blond curls, and I admired the scheme of things. Greedily she forced me to embalm her throat, and I considered how her violent instincts would complement my inscrutable will, and felt tears welling at the thought of the son she would be able to give me. Then sadness at the inevitably vain struggle of this boy to live up to his godly descent. The two contradicting sentiments formed a deep ambrosiac with the smell of the pine trees. I marveled at the power of war to beget, and the impotence of beings to end the war.

These lone thoughts that often whispered through me even in sleep, they too whispered through our camp, on shrouded nights such as this. More than a lark to them was the tale to be told of he who would lead them some day, when I was gone. The saturated air, layers of undusted fog enveloped the camp when they would think thoughts so far ahead, beyond the steel wall. There latent days would fall over the other side, a chasm to engulf. The deeds here would end for some of us, but more would come past the shimmering vapor, the undaunted wall, fluid in it’s mortar.

My son would lead, they all knew. Casting aside the thoughts of him atop a raging white steed. But, they knew he would lead, they knew him but as of one they couldn’t grasp in the hollows of word. But, aside the silence and the dry dirt, the droughts of saturated air, and the glimmer of hills shuddering to and fro past the layers of fog, there was pieces of his story to be told.

[tab]Soon to be in my place, aside a small steep grade hill; my son would kick the dust, marvel at a crooked tree growing out from the side of the hill. What sky there was in view unobstructed by the hill, was blue. Unyieldingly blue. And then a sigh and more dust flicked up in the air. Even a rock that could roll down to his feet or an imperceptible cry over the pass would have brought him to lean against the slope and close his eyes. But, the wind wouldn’t even shift the blue haze above him an inch. All would be still.

The camp knew that would be where some resolve to lead would come, but as the low flying clouds shifted exposing a new horizon, they sensed their new leader far latter than the hill, astray and near broken. The circumstances would be unknown. His mood too, would be left for wonder. All that the camp would see, hear, when they sensed these whispering thoughts on these ephemerally inscribed nights, was his eyes. Harsh deep set eyes, so sunken as to be lying in a chasm, but still remaining to show fierce past all other facial expressions. Maybe burning with rage, desperation, resolve, such was unknown. But, the flaring, all encompassing, but still silent glimmering eyes would remain deep in the hearts of those who heard the whispers those nights behind the tidal wall.[/tab]