Kieron's illustrations for the Infamous Nomadica. ©Andrew McGuire http://www.flickr.com/photos/leicanthropus_erectus/

Dedicated to our nation’s most majestic monarch

HRH Queen Elizabeth II

As written by her respectfully humble servant

Mr Timothy Grayson

Prelude

Pray, Ladies and Gentlemen, do not be afraid

Of this haggard complexion, half covered in shade,

Half covered in trinkets, gold piercings and bands,

I’m no common gypsy or seller of sands,

I’m English, once captured by slaver crusade

And sold to a nomad of far stranger lands.

My story shall start in the midst of a dream,

When awoken, was I, by this most ghastly scene:

The

Infamous Nomadica

Part the First

White wolves of the waste were attacking my wife,

Red dress ripped and tattered, eyes vacant of life,

Blood stains on her fingers, mouth frozen mid-scream,

Her body a scabbard, my merciful knife.

And so my eyes opened, but not to this act,

I was staring up, skywards, from blind Samél’s back,

My sweat-rags were soaking, my lips could not part,

My dream kept repeating, dark rocks in my heart,

Then Samél, the nomad, made my bindings slack

And I hit the floor as he turned to depart.

“Young English”, he said in an accent unknown,

“I’ll point you the way to which you can go home.

Head westwards through forests and cities of night,

And ask at the village of Mountain Moonlight.

If no-one will help you, just show them this stone”

And held out a crystal as white as starlight.

“That crystal, she comes from a land in the sea

Which you have the honour to call your country,

She was torn from your ground by the rich and the free

Turned into a nomad; poor nomad like me.

So English, I beg you, hear this wretched plea,

And take her back home, patriot refugee.”

Samél vanished into a flourish of heat

Which lapped from a distance like waves at his feet.

I drank ‘til the flagon he’d left me ran dry,

Then started my journey to blue westward sky,

Not caring what wondrous new creatures I’d meet,

Just wanting to hear my wife’s sweet lullaby.

I will try to describe her, dear neighbours of old,

But her beauty will, somehow, still tarry untold:

Black lashes of passion clasped beckoning eyes

Concealing flecks licked with the light of fireflies.

A flutter ensnared me, devotion took hold,

Enchanted by hell fire in heaven's disguise.

My head was enraptured but heart was still clear,

I told her of my wife, Britannia, so dear.

At which point, she kissed me; a dreadful affair,

For her lips, like sweet poison, infected me there,

Consumed by seduction, an opiate tear

led this virtuous man into Dante's nightmare.

Descending to dizzying depths, I awoke,

Head rattling with vipers, lungs laden with smoke.

The harlot was sleeping, her grail of whisky

Was perched like a vulture, revolted by me.

I crept to the coldness of night's bitter cloak,

Escaping the embers of raw purgatory.

I wandered for miles in the silence of shame,

The moon up above me laughed wicked disdain,

But the stars, my old comrades, they knew I was sick,

Ensnared by this Madame's absinthian trick,

'twas but a shade in that siren's domain,

A bedlamite bastard on black arsenic.

A turbulent flash and the night was aflame:
A young star blazed greatly, then faded again.
Shock lent me a tear, I mumbled a prayer,
The darkness, engulfing the light of her flare,
Wept gold-dust. Her glow was now shimmering rain,
A smiling reminder: love conquers despair.

To be continued…