May 22 and the Old Iron Rod

In honor of poor Phineas Gage, a reposting of an old poem...

"May 22 and the Old Iron Rod"

Oh? What's this?
What's happened? What's this?
Red haze and iron rod,
queasy, pierced, and I scream for God.
I feel the air whistle
through my gaping skull,
a hole behind my eye.

What's this? What's happened?
Train tracks dance before my faded vision,
Blurry, blurry.

I tried to blast the rocks,
have I blown myself up instead?
falling backward, I can feel it coming,
my left eye goes blind.
the clouds spin as I come to,
on the ground. Fallen in the sand.

What's happened? What's this?
I don't know, but I do know this,
there's a hole in my head
and all my thoughts are leaking out,
escaping one by one.

Chapter eleven is back up. I added a few details to the scene in the throne room. The following paragraph is chief among them. I felt like a queen who could bring stone to life (or at least an imitation of it) would surround herself with such creatures.


"I was also slightly horrified to note that there were a number of stone sculptures scattered throughout. I noticed the butterflies first. They dotted one wall near the queen, fluttering their gray wings. Snakes slithered down every balustrade, though these thankfully were motionless. There were even a few people, one of which was moving about in a frightful mimicry of the throng surrounding me. And perhaps most striking of all, a great horned owl kept careful watch over the entire court. It was perched on the throne of the queen herself, turning its expressionless head this way and that."

So I noticed that I've been using the terms wulfren and wulfrend interchangeably. This is a grievous error on my part, and I apologize for any confusion. Henceforth, wulfren is singular, wulfrend is plural.

If you don't have a clue what I'm talking about...then welcome to the club. ^_-