The Quest for Not a Poem

	a silent fantasy seeking dreams as time passes, pleased… plying the ocean of sleepless sounds we walk on the edge of consciousness, in need of a body to encompass our souls...

 

"Hep me, Poet...heppppp me... Show me how to html, please???"




Her pleading moves me,
swiftly galloping to my heart; I cannot resist
the falling rain of her untamed spirit...

"To find html, we must search the shores of a distant galaxy
to plead with the bottomless fairie who can aid us in our quest..."

 


We find her showering amid a cascade of lights... bottomless...




"In shadows we come to thee, oh bottomless fairie,
under the haunted moon,
amid the wildflowers
that yield their petals to the midnight wind...
wither is html?"

and the bottomless fairie said,

"You must journey to the land of dirt and rocks
and find the Brown Rose..."



so we did...
and we found the brown rose, and asked,

"We will not detain you, oh brown rose,
but what is written on the wind
that may aid us in our html'ing?"



and the brown rose said,

"Only in darkness and despair
will you find salvation,
and she is that crazy lady with a swan in her care..."

To the crazy lady we traveled,
past rising suns and setting moons,
our swirling footsteps carrying us through salted air
and past a crazy swan...



and we implored,

"Oh crazy lady,
you hear the lone cries of the past
when html shrieked among the gulls
in search of land.
Pray, tell us how to use our tongs to form html,
so our voices may sail over the morning breeze of love."

and the crazy lady replied,

"I cannot know the crimes
of what love will say.
You must journey to the tiny fairie girl
that hugs flowers,
and ask her for a tear."

and verily we arrived in the glade where the tiny fairie girl spends her days,
and we found her hugging a flower.






"Life is full of worry, little fairie girl,
and your tears we will never known.
Will you not lend us one of your tears?"

and the little fairie girl looked up and said,

"My heart is always broken,
for these flowers always die."

and with a wordless vision, she gave us a tear.

In her tear we saw a moon whispering from billowing clouds...



She said it shone upon a lone tree, 
and that we must follow the moonbeams to their end. 
We did, and arrived at a very large, solitary tree.
There we found a young prince sitting idly underneath, dreaming.



"Oh, young prince,
surely you know html.
Will you not yield your knowledge to us,
for even the silkworm offers its silk
in its truce with nature."

and the young prince said,

"I see you are on a quest for a 'not a poem',
something that will spin love in perpetual delirium.
So delicate and solemn weavers of words
you must be to desire this.
Oh, to feel the warmth of html again...
yes, I will share it with you!"

The young prince thereby spilled the ink of his wisdom onto our brows
and proceeded to impart to us the html we sought...

"Enter the garden of dreams and witness the bloom unfold as the perfume of html escapes to caress the wind of your mind... I see that you seek to place images in the fervent embrace of poems that weep alone in the sky's distant fields... REQUIREMENTS: first you must have a silver or gold membership, or the curtain will not open to unveil the wonders of html in the whispering edit window. UPLOAD YOUR IMAGE: Then you must upload your image to the Internet. The easiest way is to upload it as a main picture to an AP poem, then it will have the Internet address used in my example below. THE EDIT WINDOW: Along the top of the edit window, there is a button with a 'less than/greater than' symbol... speak the incantation "I wish to write on the stars and the wind", close your eyes, and click on the symbol... this can be tricky with your eyes closed... ENTERING THE CODE: RULE #1: You will now be beholding your poem in html code. Never, never never insert anything between areas that begin with the less-than symbol and end with the greater-than symbol, for that is where the shadows of html code dance. Remain outside those symbols, and your pictures and text and poem will live. Heed this not, and error message you will get. Simple click the browser's back button until you are back to your unedited poem. You will have to make sacrificial libations to the gods and refresh your page. Then you may begin your edit again... THE CODE: The code crackles in the night on blank pages of fire... to begin, find the word after which you wish to place your image, then type the beginning less than symbol for your code, then the three letters img ensure there are no drops of blood on the screen, and continue... follow 'img' with a space, then 'src' and then an equal sign, src= and beware of exhaustion and loneliness, as they may begin to touch your soul... after the equal sign type an opening double-quote to appease the spirits of the Internet... then type the hallowed AP address of your image, img.allpoetry.com/images//custom/ follow this with your AP name, using the underscore for any spaces, such as Night_Hope follow this with a forward slash / then the filename of your images, such as QuillPaperX.gif follow this with an ending double-quote, and follow that with the ending greater than symbol, and you are done. The empty room of your poem will be filled with the song of light."

The princely dreamer looked at all the words above, and then at our preplexed faces, and wisely added,

In short, upload your image as a main picture to AP, then while editing your poem, click the html button at the top of the edit window, and insert after the words you wish it to be placed, substituting your name (with underscores for spaces) and your image filename for those of Night Hope's. secret tool:  while editing in html mode   will create a line space...

With that, the princely dreamer said,

"and now, poets, go to work,
so that I may once again place my hands upon a page
and have my emptiness filled with a bouquet of visions."







"I done did it, Poet!!! Yay, me!!! Thanks, Wayne..."







Epilogue:

In the restless night when we lose our grip,
exhausted from a lengthy trek,
deep our aching will ever cease
when html arrives!

A handsome youthly prince now sings,
a flower-hugging fairie child brings
tears that shine with silver light
revealed to us by a crazy lady with what appeared to be a killer attack-swan.

In this hour, html blossoms
by virtue of a talking rose in a land of brown
guarded by a bottomless fairie, still showering,
who breathes the night sky
onto the shores of a distant galaxy, a galaxy that is the original seed of html.

A & production, of sorts...

poetic passages derived from Entwined (lengthy) by Night Hope