The Patient One
Ughh. I fought with this for three hours and I still hate it. It's something frivolous and vaguely folksy about Villi Selannor from Shadowplay - maybe it's the local drunks' gossip about her. The first eight lines took ten minutes, the last sestet all the rest of the time. Killed four notebook pages scratching shit out. At least I took a tree down with me, I guess. This is why I still write longhand a lot of the time. Least when I have nothing to say I don't have to sit there mourning my digital nothing.
The teahouse on the docks doesn't sell tea.
You wouldn't want to drink the things they sell;
They wouldn't leave you feeling very well,
and morning's tide will wash you out to sea.
The imp who runs the place is ninety three
It was her poison sent three kings to hell.
They found a thousand souls down in that well,
whose lives that imp had ended for a fee.
In Capria she plied her bloody trade;
she liked our fourth king, and she let him stay,
kept up her shop, and kept the king afraid.
He lived to die of old age where he lay,
and though each year her neighbors' whiskers greyed,
in ninety years, she hasn't aged a day.
