Stephen King
My Poem “The Dark Tower”
I once spent an entire summer
with Roland Deschain,
“The Gunslinger”,
as we followed
the “Man in Black”
as he fled across the desert
of a world that had “moved on”,
in the pages of the books
of Stephen King’s epic
multi-novel adventure
“The Dark Tower” –
and it was as we journeyed
and followed the path
of the beams that led
to the tower that stands
and binds the worlds
of Stephen King’s stories together
that I discovered along the way
that the best stories
are like the most memorable dreams,
and that to find something
you may have been looking for
for as long as you can remember
sometimes the doorways
that we must walk through
we can only find
when we explore the world’s
that reveal themselves
under the covers –
and now I am preparing to enter
a movie-theatre so that I may return
to the world of Stephen King
and journey again across a desert
and through magical doors
with “The Gunslinger”
and return again to “The Dark Tower”.
My Poem ‘The Gunslinger’
Waking up even before the sun has risen,
getting up and putting on his jeans and his boots,
the Gunslinger always goes to the open window
and stares at the horizon…
watching the sky start to slowly
look like the burning ember
of a timeless celestial fire,
the Gunslinger’s heart overflows
with an intense desire –
because he knows that he is getting ever-closer
to the centre of the universe
that lies where The Dark Tower of reality
stands and casts a shadow in his direction
for the Gunslinger to follow.
The Gunslinger carries many scars…
the Gunslinger has had more than one tussles
in more than one towns and bars…
the Gunslinger does what he does
because he is being guided by
the hands of fate upon his shoulders…
the Gunslinger knew, even as a child,
that he was meant to do something
monumentally important,
and that belief and that feeling
grew steadily stronger
the more the years flew by
and the Gunslinger got older.
He was a keen student of the past…
he was a man who had learned the hard way
that if you want to survive
what life sometimes throws at you
you have got to think, learn, and act fast…
he was someone who had been taught
that respect was one of the greatest virtues
that anyone could remember and put into practice…
he was already some-what of a legend in his own right,
and he was almost as elusive
as that of the sunken island that was Atlantis.
The Gunslinger drunk life as if it were whiskey…
the Gunslinger embraced change
as if he were holding the body of a woman…
the Gunslinger was a poet
but he never in his life
wrote a single word of poetry…
the Gunslinger had been waking up
for as long as he could remember
knowing that he had a destiny to fulfill
that he could not yet fully-understand.
The Gunslinger was real,
and yet the stuff of dreams;
the Gunslinger loved a good meal,
but he hungered more to see
something of the world
but which felt not-of-his-world
that he had imagined
but had not yet seen;
the Gunslinger knew that where he was
was but a way-station to where he was going;
the Gunslinger was inspiring others,
and he was being followed wherever he went
without his knowing.
He had always thought of his weapon
as but an extension of his own arm…
he had always considered his lightning-fast draw
as his greatest gift…
he had always used his finely-honed instincts
to keep himself and those he loved
from coming to harm…
finding the one place in the entire world
where he could take off his hat
and unbuckle his gun-holster
and lay-down his revolver
is what he had always wished.
And as the rose before him,
and as the dawn-chorus called to him,
and as his trigger-finger started to quiver,
and as the heat began to darken his skin,
he knew that he was reason
for all things and for everything…
and without even blinking an eye
he smiled and then prepared to head-out,
saddle-up, and race towards
that which would give him
the reason he was seeking
why for his entire life
he had always been “The Gunslinger”.
Inspired by ‘The Dark Tower – The Gunslinger’ by Stephen King
My Poem ‘Corvus’
As black as the night-sky,
as intelligent as a mathematician,
as symbolic of life and death
as any bird that you will seeing flying in the sky,
the Crow is a bird that has always
gripped me with intrigue, awe, and fascination.
Crows have always been close by
when something life-changing and important
was just about to rise on the horizon;
there have been legends written and told
that tell of crows being messengers of life and the afterlife;
crows have featured in many supernatural stories
that walk a line of magic,
and tell tales of emissaries of hell and heaven;
if there we ever a bird that I would imagine
to be the perfect embodiment of night existing during the day,
it would have to be the crow, in every way –
even their black, pearl-like, eyes
are enough to elicit a shiver and a fright.
I often hear the caw of a crow;
I see a murder of crows almost every day;
I live very near to a forest of trees
in which crows roost and have a nest
on almost every branch of every tree,
and they have been there for longer than I know;
I have come face to face with a crow more than once,
and on more than one occasion it seemed to me
as if there was more to their fascination with me than I could ever say.
Crows are carriers of information;
crows are renowned in mythology as omens of gods and goddesses,
as tricksters, as reincarnated spirits,
who have unparalleled direction.
I believe there is more truth in a crows symbolism and significance
than legend or mythology could ever tell us.
In my bedroom, I have the most life-like
figure of a crow you will ever see,
and for some reason the sight of them
always gives me pause and focus;
and the name that I have given the crow perched on my bookshelf,
next to my Stephen King books,
is the same name as its genus –
the one and only ‘Corvus’.
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