The Existential Knight Errant

My armor lacks luster--the metal doesn't shine anymore.
My polished war helmet was left in a hotel room.
My breast plate was left under a bed.
My gauntlet was stuffed in a closet floor. 

My days and nights at the banquet hall have faded.
The tapestries still hang on the wall, with people enjoying harvests.
I do not feel their satisfaction anymore.
I slowly lose my romantic protections from the storm.

My lance was lost in a studio.
My sword rusted in the rain on a bench.
My axe chipped and broke in an office chair.
My mace was wrapped around my neck on a couch.

Tonight I am bare bones, soft skin plodding down deserted stairwells toward home.
Along my path people tiptoe in the eye of my existence.
A father laughs and lifts his child on his shoulder blades.
A mother pulls a baby carriage up a steep curb with a quick pulling cut.
Lovers walk toward action films, slapstick comedies and steamy romances.
Their steps only serve to haunt me.
Me, alone with a hero's tragedy.

My princess takes a distant coach to the north.
She goes to a garret of cul de sac streets and trimmed patterned lawns.
A dragon lies breathing fire behind a golf course.
It belches cloistered words near the shadows of holes.
Pools are empty mirrors now, where once lovers swam.
The swimmers now see moats and drawbridges.
The princess closes her eyes and dreams a dragon,
her knight wades deeper into self-imposed darkness.

He walks through littered streets back to a world of railroad apartments.
His dagger was discarded in a storm drain on the street.
He hears the sounds of car alarms, circling around the drumbeat
of his shuffling wooden feet.
He is alone--his journey is but an abstraction of sound--
it rides around his head again--and out.
a quest dictated by thoughts and dreams and meanings--
crowded into long dark paragraphs
and cut, terse short sentences.

His errand tucked between commas, signifiers and dead stops.
Every period removes a piece of the knight's weaponry for the world.
Banquet halls are cold and spectral.
Honored battle is but a distant memory.
The fire burning in his soul is out.
Stripped and bare, the knight journeys naked into a world without
armor or weapon.
Escape and warfare evade him.
Enlightenment is his alone, and it is ruthless, savage and cold.

The dragon begins to snore and smoke while it sleeps.
The princess weeps and wonders about the knight's being.
And the knight errant exists alone, stung by storms and existentially aware.
The knight exists, dressed only in underwear.

A Dream Meal

We share a meal, nothing more.

It starts with a cold gazpacho with ground vegetables, slender blades of radish, and sprinkles of black pepper on top.

Next, on the menu is a duck quesadilla with mango salsa. Cheese and darkened strips of meat, dashed with sweet savor of spicy sauce.

Our entrees are shared, as always.
Dishes exchanged with beautiful words and quick hands and artful glances.

We share a salmon steak with a creamy dill sauce,
and then the fillet of sole, grilled with drips of fresh lemon.

My eyes wander. I await the dessert. The topping to my meal.

But there is no dessert here to share. No more.

The creamy custard in the rounded dish does not present.

I only imagine a creme brulee tinged with just the right scorch
of a handheld torch.

The imagined fire does not soften the dark vanilla beans under a crystal crust.

My dreams go back to distant desserts, cold and creamy, hardened by flames.
Spoons dipping into hard surfaces and creamy inner substances.
Fingers licking the dish dry.
An ecstasy of sweet sugar.

The meal is over. Dessert is but a dream.
A dream so real and so delicious, to me.