a watch and three dreams - an excerpt from "Sludge White and the Seven Curmudgeons"

this excerpt from my novella-poem, "Sludge White and the Seven Curmudgeons"
relates a portion of the mysterious 'night of dreams', wherein each of the characters
is visited in the span of a single night.  Gramps was discovered in the dungeons of
the castle when the Curmudgeons rescued Nate the Woodsman (on the way home
they experienced the drone attack on ByWater Landing).  Mock had been orphaned
by his grandfather's disappearance, decades ago.  the reason for Pally's angst is
explained in the excerpt that deals with the drone attack.
*******
Gramps kept watch in the spookhouse in the woods

haunting the hallways, treading trenches in the floors,

like a soldier whose horror lives inside him

forever ensnared in never-ending wars.

he couldn't bear to close his eyes in darkness

uncertain they'd open on daylight again.

he feared waking up in a formless, senseless void

beyond the compass of anyone's ken.

his grandson slept soundly, swathed in reverie

swaddled in irony and wound in his sheets,

unaware of his elder's unraveling woe

reviving his life as a stray on the streets.

springing from a hideout, Pasty at his side.

spitting at soldiers, then taking to their heels.

scavenging for crumbs with pigeons and sparrows.

pinching saucy tarts to spice up paltry meals.

Pally's muffled dreams teemed with flying children

a sinuous string of tiny trusting hands.

losing his grip, he clambered in a chasm

struggling and slipping in suffocating sands.

he leapt from the covers, his heartbeat thumping,

thrashing and shivering in a sweat soaked chill.

Nate pulled him close and stilled his soundless spasms,

blinking back the tears Pally's eyes wouldn't spill.

later when moonshine winked in the window

divulging the tale of an owl's gliding flight,

Nate drifted through themes lifted from childhood

drenched in dappled sunshine, splashed with wells of light.

he fashioned a pipe at his late father's side

eager for approval, brash with newfound skill.

but the stem recrafted into a cudgel

radiating hate, and hankering to kill.

he smashed it on the ground, and battered its pieces

but the scene scattered and spun like a top,

and flung him on a plank of a rickety bridge

spanning a daunting, precipitous drop.

pursuing sentries surged from either side

their arrows clattering and plunging in the gorge.

as he panicked the situation altered

to a clustered bluster round the blacksmith's forge.

he couldn't quite grasp the gist of the grievance

that roused the peasants to bristling high dudgeon;

but he glimpsed the weapons burnished on the wall,

which briskly recalled the brandishing bludgeon.

he pondered the source propelling its evil,

and the shrouded fright shouting in outraged eyes;

and woke with the notion that disavowed doubt

must be rife in a life where violence lies.
*******
(thus endeth the excerpt - Evan Hawthorn, 13th of May, 2015)