Passages of a poetic play in progression

Lions and Dragons

(I have left out the first few stanzas here...)

Your eyes are the eyes of a Seer.
The eyes of a Wise man.
Your wrists, angular and bony,
                   made of cynicism and despair.
Of too many decades spent in the darkness.
Of thoughts so sharp
                   that pain is bound to be their faithful companion.
But the sight of your structure flares a spark in me.
A spark I thought I'd forgotten.
No lust. No desire. Love.

I was mesmerised by you -
no denying that.
The wizard
                   in a cloak of red and purple and blue.
Wearing a helmet of pearly pride.
Strong. Self-conceited. Steel hard.
Sometimes grotesque.
Yes...grotesque is how I like you.
Grotesque and raw: a carbon copy of our time.
Served on a silver plate with white lilies around.
Sheer raw truth.
Spiky and corroding.
No lies for the two of us.
No lies BETWEEN the two of us.
I want you skimmed
                   down to the last leathery tendon.
Oh, and you will be.

For the likes of you:
no mercy.
What is self earned,
                   is self compensated.
Fair deal.
We know what we are doing, don't we?
Pity on those
                   who must add colour to reality
                                       from their imagination.
I always reduce colour from it:
                   how else would I be believed?

[The paragraph below is to be read aloud by a third person:]

(But every day is a weigh on my shoulder.
Old age, heavy tasks...
There is a limit to how much a person can take.
Always tired.
Who else would understand my fate but you?
Left alone with too many open strings:
too many knots that cannot be tied by anyone else.
Oh dear gods and goddesses -
reach (out) your hand and help me!)

Will I ever watch a person
with the same painstaking warmth
                   as I watch you?
With the same silent respect?
God only knows that I see your flaws -
and great they are -
each one of them
                   making you glisten ever gloomier in my eyes.
Each one of them
                   drawing a deeper line on the road map of features on your face.
A face beyond hope.
A face beyond the treshold of numbness.
A face far beyond caring.
                   Fragmented and shaky.
But as we have both come to know...
extreme pain contains its own peace:
A one-way-ticket back to innocense.
A treasure only to be found by few and chosen.
It seals us together; like nothing else.
With a glue mightier than
                   bounds of blood or love or loyalty.
Shared experience.
Shared fate.
Unmatched in depth and scale and endurance.

"What about the future?", you ask.
"Would you walk along the same path with me?
Would you face the same dragons and lions?"

"Lions and dragons must be faced alone", I say.
"No single person on earth to help you on that.
May god have mercy on you".

"Well, would you even pretend?"

"Don't you remember? No lies between the two of us.
Sheer, bare, blatant truth. No comfort, no pretension.
I want this relationship to stand out.
I want it unique and beautiful.
Still waters run deep, you know".

I gently touch your left wrist,
bow down to kiss the onyx ring on your fore finger.
With a deliberately calming look in my eyes,
I send you out to the world,
to face your own perils.
- I already was there anyway.
When you are two steps away, I whisper:
"My love will embrace your each step. Always".
But you know that by now.

You limp away, a barren figure,
dry and shrunken
by what you've gone through.
Few people would see their fulfilment in you;
deterred by the stern face,
the rundown figure.
But to me your surface
                   is the ultimate of beauty
with your inside engraved on it:
with a blunt chissel, an inaccurate one,
but one that pierces deep.
- The manifestation of all my longings.