Sibling Rivalry by Jonathon Earl Bowser

The Halls of Schwedagon,
stand mighty and tall.
Proud Fortress. Heroic, Stoic.
A Beacon to Wanderers, Squanderers, Ponderer's, all.

History Etched in its Chambers.
Magic and Mischief drenched in its Walls.

Turrets of mystery, Peaking through mists that be,
vexing, perplexing, Uncertainty's Kiss.

Pressing its lips  against this ever steepening,
winding, serpentining, death defining precipice. 
 
Silent mistress. 
Silent witness to man's zeniths and descents.

Called The Crossroads by all travelers 
in their journeys not yet, through.
Just a stopping place for many
Wanderers passing to and through.
These Halls of stolen kisses,
whispering Mists, undertones
and half cast lights,
Stealing like their shadows
through the unseen,unheard of night.

Schwedagon is all of this.

Both the Seen and Unseen, Kissed. 
The Heard and Unheard, too,
Abounding, yet, Surrounding,
Ensnaring, Cloying, Toying with and about you. 
In swirling, prickling mists, 
Or stormy howling winds,
bemoaning change and want,
the is's and has beens.

Woe Be Gotten!

Jutting columns Rising, 'midst, breathing,
heaving veils of fog and gray
Like finger Pointing exclamations
choked up and cast away.

As quickly, thickening, vapors,
wrought from somewhere, far below
begin spinning round this shaft
of shale and slate and boulder. 
Round stone rocked shoulders
climbing up and up they go.

These mists all still insisting, 
they are born of and they know.
The Udd, The Great Abyss,
 heard now, rumbling, ummy, umblings 
from that dark place,
full of irk and mumbling found 
down and down and down, 
there, unburied, unweeping, 
in the ever deepening, darkness far below.
The Underground. The Undertow.

Listen.

Hear the whispers through the hisses.
Hear the cackling in the winds.
Crackling, snapping twigs or fire, the symphony begins!
Whip like lashes, whisks and flashes,
the banshees, Shrill and without names
Posing Questions, wraithlike shadows,
wandering through these mists
moaning, groaning, Un ashamed.

Shuttered, Tethered, Solemn, 
Weathered Columns speaking volumes,
 to the murk of lurk and gloom.
Gates thrown wide awaiting,
wanting guests to entice, seduce, consume.

Enter here at your own peril.
Enter here at your own risk.
Temptations kiss, Schwedagon was born of this!

Wonder, dark or doom,
laughter, merriment and dance,
come ye' gamblers take your chances,
sweet promises, romances 
when visiting these rooms.

Secrets are coffins, here entombed,
in these steeples of sepia and brown.
Amber woven tapestries, unraveled, shaken out,
come tumbling down. 

Burnt orange streaking
cross the crevices of their face
Vexing, hexing, double x-ing
their stories now, are told,
all unfolding, tarnished, gold. 

Perched and poised for the great battle
of thy soul from pull to stole
in chilling skies of murk that rattles through these chambers,
we are tugged and pulled and go.

Now, heard the rumbling once again,
just beneath your feet,
the belly, down below.
'Neath Schwedagon's Ballroom
Where Guests go to Banquet and to Dance.
Turning glancers, waltzers, prancers,
Bear hugging they embrace.

Ah! See that something echoed, there,
then etched into that face.

Fevered though yet, freezing
Guests are often vexed or chased
walking, talking, sometimes balking
some withhold and some embrace.
Spirits come and go here.
Some to wine and dine and sing.
Some to meet or make new friends
or to weep and ponder 
'ore  dark, disturbing things.

So, Come ye' all ye watchers
and ye' waders in your turn.
You have nothing to deliver
but the secrets you have learned.

Voyeurism burned, affections unreturned.
 
 Plodding nilly, willy
scuffling, crawling on its belly.
Killy, kully, illy, welly
Sullied caverns in the celly.

Schwedagon's  Ballroom filled and creeping,
guests and dancers, seldom sleeping.

Drenched in lights of flickering candles
Burning, torches, fire's glow!
Where twirling dancers linger, languish,
hungry for the show.
Played out upon its stages,
the stairways winding round 
and round and round.
Up to many other levels
Where all fantasy abounds.
The wonder and despair,
 heroes, villains mingle here and there.
 Action rendered nill and null and void, in truce.

None as yet, destroyed.

Schwedagon forbids the battles
yet, to take place in time.
 Existing in those split seconds 
pending choices to be made,
paid for or undermined.
Undetermined.

Everyone with free will.
Everyone with voice.
Everyone with their fate ahead.
Everyone still has a choice.

Iffy this and Ilky that,
misgivings, are in fact,
Cliffy stairs of stone rock rising. 
They go leading, up and up,
these mini summits leaning.
 Lined with lengths of tables, 
chairs and benches, steep and deep.
At every floor, we find enabled
more tiny halls filled with excesses, incomplete.
Like great extensis filling up it's many length-hes.
with it's folkses, recompenses.
 Observers over fences.
 
Licks of Lutes, winds and wisps,
Schwedagon's song is all of this.
Drummy, drumming fingers strumming
Trolls and Druids hummy, humming.
Fairies flutter, utter chants 
Elves and Wood Sprites prance and dance.
Celebration, music swells
goblins, griffons, mystic's spells
all life's circles mingling here
tells their stories, secrets, fears!
 
Hear! Now, do you hear?

Swirling mists like vipers dancing  
along the seems of shadows and their dreams.
Travelers at the edge of time, meet combine.
Their pilgrimages, waging war through out these vapors
velvet chilly fogs, agog with the unseen.

Scamps and Capers.

Held here Just above, the great descent
Where other watchers went instead.
There is both Sanctity and Haunt
dressed in weariness fatigue,
some of them are bleeding 
and yet, some are yet, to bleed.
In these Crossroads of the mind,
where dreamers dare to seek and find,
their courage and belief to go on or back,
the adventure or sweet relief. 

Released.

Shadows slipping by you, Trolls and Goblins
steppy stepping on the stairs.
Magic ones and those they've touched,
reaching for you Be careful and Beware.
Schwedagon, the curtain drawn between
the down under and retreat.
Hulking, Skulking, Go the gray sheaths known as wanting.
Lost and squandered far below,
where some have come to know,
the Serpent's rhetoric and so,
it beckons with the seconds,
listening, glistening in a glow.
Willing, wandering spirits
like doomed soldiers
to the slaughter, wait and watch.
See, in numbers how they grow.

Now, they go to slay their dragons.
somewhere just beyond,
these halls where the breath of 
the unknown awaits them
or forbades them
their lives to rise or spit upon.

Schwedagon casts its spell here
upon these columns of decay.
Squalls of thunder, indecision
 and dank and dark dismay.

So dance and dine and mark this time
for purgatory comes!
This is just the split second before 
fate is cast for some.

Leave by the gates from which you came!
Decisions left to be.

Yes, Before, The Dragon wakens, watching, waiting!
Breeding, bleeding, seeing beyond these boundaries.
He's reaching out for thee.
Go before he walks this way!
Ravaging the passages no words, he's none to say.
His power and ferocity, His breath is wrought in fire 
born of the old of yesterday.
His venoms spread this way
spraying flames that burn, flay, turn and slay.
So, few ever walk away.
Every breathe another day.
Schwedagon is lost to they
yet, awaits the new who come,
 again to romp and play,
'tween the moments in their lives
when they too, May walk his way.

Decisions, sweet decisions,
choices, rights and wrongs
Ah! This be Schwedagon, proud fortress!
Heroic, Stoic.
Fate, yet, to look upon...
Heaving its last breath in this, its Poetry,
its Verse, its Vexing, Hexing Song!

by
Lady LaMythica
a.k.a Linda A. Copp

September 30, 1999

By Lady LaMythica, Linda A. Copp © All rights reserved World Wide
including but not limited to 1999-2015

This astounding composition, "The Hall's of Schwedagon", was composed and performed by  David Folsom.

To hear more of David's beautiful music and read his poetry. Click on his name above.

Please visit Jonathon  Earl Bowser's Website and view more of his
Incredible Art, Essays and Poetry