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SOLDIER
It’s a mistake often made, to think a rabbit has no bite.
Teeth, designed for savagery -
skin tears just as easily as grass.
Nails that can show you
the color of your guts, inside out,
when you feel its barbed toes gouging deep.
Muscled legs that carry it far,
so fast you catch barely a glimpse -
if it feels like running.
But if it stands its ground, staring back with liquid eyes,
your own ghostly reflection, grim proof,
you’ll know too late you were wrong.
Mercy shall not be granted,
for all the times you tried to cut its foot for luck.
Tried to take its fur and make a coat.
Tried to steal its beauty
for nothing better than greed, inglorious -
a truly unforgivable sin.
But I know a secret, too well kept: A bunny is a soldier.
Dangerous, below the skin.
Be careful if you get too close.
Sweet, below the danger.
But you must first be invited.
Because if you are not,
if you approach without caution,
without kindness, respect,
Bunny Soldier will quickly teach your mistake.
When you feel its teeth around your neck:
Closing, you have become grass.
Bleeding, you are a scarlet river.
Sinking, you are a fallen city,
Oh Babylon, have you not learned?
Watch as your body turns
to food for the worm, to ash.
From dust you came, to which you return,
as you fade, sinking back to the earth.
This is how the flesh becomes one, bones to soil.
And rabbits were born to eat grass.
Sunrise illuminates the grave it has made of you
as Bunny Soldier walks over your ghost,
your soul beneath its claws forever.
And the rabbit smiles, those gorgeous wicked teeth,
knowing all along you would bow.
But if you are invited - oh lucky, lucky you! -
Bunny Soldier’s heart will melt your armor.
Even dragons and demons will bow -
monstrous creatures that had to learn how to do it.
But the bunny was kind when it taught them,
bravely showing -
even greater than its soldier claws,
stronger than its leaping legs,
more powerful than fierce sharp teeth,
is its softness.
In the way its ribs are not a cage
to keep its heart safe from the world,
but to keep the world safe from its heart.
The greatest force
between the heavens and the depths -
in this and every universe -
caged inside that fearless, fighting, wild rabbit chest -
Bunny Soldier’s love.
Watch the dragon lower its mighty head
and creep softly on the ground
to nudge a little bunny nose fondly.
On a belly that has never touched the ground,
with teeth that have never closed gently.
See the proud demon sink to its knees, crouching low,
humbly offering its hopeful claws to a little bunny nose.
On knees that have never bent before,
with a chest that has never felt hope.
It is not teeth,
nor nails,
nor angry eyes,
nor sinuous muscle
that tames dragons and demons.
It is the power, the splendor, the awe
of Bunny Soldier’s gentle heart.
Though if you are not Dragon Poet or Demon King,
may the universe have mercy in other ways.
Because you’ll never see it,
and they will kill you if you try.
POET
It's a mistake often made, to think dragons are extinct.
Mythical, yes. Magical, certainly.
But dead? Far from it.
Warm, alive, breathing.
Even soft sometimes.
Scales do not always mean impenetrability,
soaring does not negate reachability,
fire does not always destroy.
In a universe as old as time itself,
and only once every six thousand years,
a miracle takes shape by magic unknown, only felt -
in ripple-shimmers and shifting shadows,
the galaxies shiver with delight,
with anticipation, with dread.
The birth of the shockwaves,
fearless heart of destruction,
brilliant eye of the perfect storm:
A soul of a poet, in dragonskin.
Beauty and terror encased,
hidden beneath black diamond scales,
a heart beating powerfully within,
fire taking form.
Humans do not believe they exist,
because they do not know how to look for them.
One does not march against a dragon,
draped in bravery and laughing,
unless one is a Bunny.
One does not dance in dragon flames,
nor walk in its shadow without fear,
unless one is a Demon.
And not just any Bunny or any Demon will do.
They must also be Soldier and King.
One of each only -
one Dragon Poet,
one Bunny Soldier,
one Demon King
in this and all other lifetimes.
The only true permanence of eternity.
The only thing astrally, mystically real.
Even better kept than the Extinction Myth
is the secret of a dragon’s beating heart.
It is beautiful - the eighth and most glorious wonder of the world.
Its mind, incredible beyond imaginings,
but its heart - oh that magnificent heart -
the heart of god.
Strong enough to turn the world’s axis if it wanted,
destroying all.
But because the beast is generous,
because its nature is, in essence
purely, rapturously kind,
the dragon permits the world to breathe,
to stay on course,
to remain ignorant.
Were I capable of pity -
I would feel deep pangs for mankind's failure
to know, to understand, to marvel, and
for never experiencing the grace of the dragon,
never seeing its poetry,
never feeling its soul -
but I am not.
And Bunny Soldier and Demon King are lucky.
The scales made to withstand all enemies crumble
with friends.
The wings that spread to soar
strong, beyond the moon, among the stars,
carry friends.
The fire capable of absolute destruction
creates warm campfires to sit around,
counting stories and laughing,
with friends.
Another secret - I say too much -
but Dragon Poet is the rarest of them all.
A beauty too gorgeous for this earth,
any description, but paltry.
For nothing can capture its elemental magic
or describe the awe it possesses.
Its words wound just as deeply as its fire.
Its heart, equal parts brave and withdrawn.
The battles it fights are not temporary.
And it is used to fighting alone.
But just as that one magic miracle
takes place every six thousand years,
gifting the world with a dragon;
and just as there exists,
in all of eternity - once, only -
a Dragon Poet,
so too there comes from the darkness, the depths,
a Bunny Soldier and a Demon King.
The greatest miracle of all -
when the three found each other,
no longer alone in the darkness.
KING
It's a mistake often made,
thinking crowns are always gold.
The king shall be crowned and has been -
again
and again
and again,
not a blessing.
This is what it means to be cursed.
And crowns can be forged from so many things.
Iron and thorns,
blood and bone,
screams and darkness.
Oh yes, all sins can be twisted,
bent to circlet shape and jammed,
cruelly hard, on scarred and weary flesh.
Only in books are the crownless made king.
But in the waking and dreaming worlds,
and every empty space between,
all crowns are heavy and unmerciful.
Piled together time and again,
compounding the weight of cruelty
in burdens too great to bear.
Mortals could not do it.
But a demon can.
And has, and does.
Bearing the weight beyond worlds,
slipping in its blood with every stubborn step,
on broken claws and shattered bones,
until enough eternities have passed
that it becomes too proud to kneel,
too empty to weep,
long forgetting how to bleed -
replaced with swirling void, and cold,
so long ago it cannot remember when.
Oh, the king shall rule.
From the iron throne of its own clawed feet,
from behind its own dark gaze,
the fires bred within,
darker than the midnight sky.
untamed and vicious, invincible, forever.
And demons live a long time.
Long enough to be wrong.
It happens rarely, and never before quite like this,
but one strange day,
it held out its claws and made fire,
cupped in its palm and blew gently,
sending flickering flames into the world.
Dandelion wishes,
on the backs of black and hellish butterflies,
memories of what it thought was sunlight,
fading back into darkness without hope.
But from the void - an answer!
No, two!
A dragon saw, and heard.
A bunny felt.
Crowns are made of many things,
and rarely so benign as gold.
But once in a demon’s lifetimes -
and demons live many, many lifetimes -
a crown is made of scales and fur
and sits gently on a demon’s lonely head.
Strong enough to make it bow,
kind enough to make it remember
what tears felt like, when its spirit was younger,
before its flesh was replaced with scars,
reminding it there are better things
than only pride, than emptiness.
Easily proven
when the dragon snorts thick smoke
and the demon laughs freely,
without pain.
Clearly observed - and deeply felt -
when the bunny stamps
and the demon claps delightedly,
purely, utterly, incandescently charmed.
Revealed with even greater proof of power
when they sit softly,
around a campfire, counting stories.
Not needing to say the things that have been done
to their hearts, their minds, their bodies
before the dandelion wishes
tickled their noses on butterfly wings.
Simply reaching, gently winding,
exchanging smiles, illuminated
far brighter than stars or campfires,
holding threads of gold and blue and red and silver,
to weave with love into each other’s tapestries.
Teaching the Demon King what it forgot -
that stars are worth lifting their eyes for.
Even if those celestial orbs of glory and power,
whose fires burn ageless and unbroken,
are not nearly as glorious as Dragon Poet - not by half -
nor remotely as powerful as the littlest toe on sweet Bunny Soldier.
A Bunny, a Soldier,
A Dragon, a Poet,
A Demon, a King.
We three.