Monkey Do

'Mong the dream-tree's leaves
young'un Chuck sat fancying himself
the man who manned the fire-tower,
custodian of forests primordial-

Or better yet, a-sea,
the undaunted occupant
of a noble crow's-nest
'mid catastrophic North Sea gale.

Such chivalrous precocity
cordially clasped Charlie's
gasped-out, hardly hammered heart-
still crude-formed and un-flame-refined.

His blood-muscle unpedigreed,
unadorned, ungilt by filagree,
by battle-mail never draped,
was prone to sweetest Night
plunging sharply therein to the hilt.

The global velocity of two-score years behind
left him shy-scarred by multiple puncturings,
(his bilious humours mostly bled)
a head with Grail-fueled failings filled,
periodically gloomy, bone-tired rheumy,
most modestly skilled and quite undead.

Aging, silliest Charlie'd
seen the adult result
of rein-roped glee:
original equine energy
gone snuffed and strange,
a thing gripped and twitchy
with fear-sick constriction.

And though a sick litany
of countless rejections
sometimes gunked-up
his dream-driven agile eyes
and left him dumbly squinting,
still sought He some She
who would not "Why?"
the wisdom of donning
synergistic wings when they
came home a-hinting.