A Tragic Meeting: Re-Rewrite

Resting in a snow-laid forest;
The ground a cloud for me to drift away on
and feel the joy of heaven's shine.

There was such warmth, in utter, freezing cold
I thought as stars twinkled in the twilight
converging, clashing in electric haze.

The heavens dipped and swerved from sight
as if no mighty canvas held them still;
Perhaps the Goddess Nyx had been deposed?

Orion, the Dipper both came to life;
The Great Hunter offered me a drink
of starlit soup from Ursa Major.

As I grasped the dipper it exploded
in the form of tiny, winged creatures
flashing bright, leaving spots before my eyes.

I called out, getting shrill laughs in reply;
They surrounded me in what was now a
deepening, impenetrable darkness.

Fear took me and I used my size against
their vast growing and expansive numbers
stretching from fixed earth to porous moon.

I threw an angry blow upon their ranks,
They scattered to regroup hastily;
Manifesting shape of Mighty Heracles.

A glittering lion skin of fays draped
the form, that conquered Mighty Hydra,
found the apples of Hesperides.

They moved to strike me as Stymphalian
birds, the pets kept by the God of War,
with beaks of bronze and toxic dung.

Their fairy club hit my heart in brutal haste
knocking it painfully from out my chest
while turning the angelic snow to red.

I reached in greatest effort for the heart
as laughing faeries kicked it to and fro,
not caring if they dropped or punctured it.

Before I fell unconscious, I saw them
fly away with it – their cajoles reverberating madly
at my maligned misfortune, misery.

Woe, this life! I awoke without a heart;
Unable to retain a love or friendship,
loathing my sojourn into that wood.

Females screamed to see a hole where it once
had beat so valiantly, so dutiful
to the rhythms of the band and bells.

It glowed with black magic in the dark,
imposed itself upon the blind to feel
so they might be scared as all the rest were.

I became a living myth;
So like the dreaded beast of bull and man
that haunts the Cretan Labyrinth.

Medusa was the only one to under-
stand me, so isolated and alone;
a cast-off recluse with a gaze of stone.
.