Epic in the Cemetery [Revised]

When you first met the dragon,

you were scared. You hear

her roar. It stirs the dead,

brings skeletal claws to tear

you away. The knight

arrives, and brings you peace.

For some years, peace.

No more talk of dragons.

Why not be a knight?

Now hear,

“No tears,”

say the dead.

You feel dead.

She left a piece

deep in you. You tear

at the scar you will not name. “Dragon?

There’s no dragon here.”

You’ve never seen a scared knight.

One night,

you ask the dead

not to leave you here.

This gagged and screaming peace

Drags on.

You try to summon a tear.

On bare feet, tear

through the night.

You are going to meet the dragon

with the newly dead.

Nocturnal peace

makes a roar easier to hear.

Right here,

make the final tear

and rip to pieces

the rusty-armored knight.

A chorus dead

hails a newborn dragon.

Listen closely, hear the knights’

cries as you tear them from the dead.

No peace for a dragon.

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For my revisions, I changed two of my endwords - "red" in the original draft became "dead" here, and "angry" became hear. Hear has much more double entendre potential than the word it replaced, and "dead" actually allowed me to add a new metaphorical element to the poem. I also tried to create more interesting images in this version of the poem, and incorporate some more variety in sentence structure particularly by introducing "spoken" parts. Stanzas 3, 4, and 7 received the most changes. Each still has roughly the same role in the poem as before, but I feel this draft does a better job of having those stanzas fulfill the roles I envisioned for them.