“In the original story”

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When all is said and done my little one, there are many tales to tell.

Of winsome eyes and gay surprise by the shade of a wishing well

Of dragon fights or gallant knights or battles come and gone

Of Gwendoline’s breath, the witches death, or transformation to a swan

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Yet there is much to see and to behold. For what is read is not whats been told.

For beyond the woods and amid young dreams, are the handiwork of writers schemes

Lore eschewed for the sake off grace, where dark desire hides its face

Tell us what lay beside the juniper, still stained in youthful blood

Or golden rings and wayward fingers emerging from the mud.

Now how do pens deceive us, and show us what is not..

Campfire tales and mystic sails with morals left to rot.

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Tell me as it really was.

Tell your youths of the fabled giantess, who devoured all her kin.

The queen with the toad and viper barrel or the wooden boys great sin.

Do not blanket me from this savage world. Do not shelter my young eyes. Tell me of the pied pipers kidnapped children or Bluebeard’s chained surprise.

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For the truths are being held from us, in cages made for youthful hands. Journey with me to this storied and well rejoin these uncharted lands.

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For these are worlds of savage truths, inscribed upon our minds. Not to enchant, regale, yet warning tales emerging from their confines.

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Do not mollify or sugar coat the mermaid, who plunged from dock to death, scoring male indifference and taken up on stary breath.

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Don’t shelter us from the sleeping youth appeased an amorous prince. It did not matter if she saw him, so said in child's rhyme, for as he spills his males juices, she is asleep at this time.

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The red cloaked girl is given to a horrid death, for there was no woodsman savoir, just a wolves eternal breath.

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How now to Hansel and Gretal,eating gruel and not sugared cake. Filled to gluttony for the savage devil to bake. Devil you say, yes, for in the first incarnation they are Beelzebub’s young prey.

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These are the tales never made to speak or say. Abandoning their warnings since Walter Elias had his way.

For Aschenputtel's sisters go go blind and limp without their feet. Little pigs are kept alive and well predator turned pray with wolf stew made to eat.

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Scorn the avarice nimble Jack who takes more than he needs

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Or poor Vasalisa  in the Baba Yaga's  demon cottage made to count a thousand poppy seeds

For not all these tales should fall to ancient earth and sod

Or should we dismiss the fearful mummerings of a young Scheherazade

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Oh children of the Black Forest

extol your brutal truths

Stories fell and fables now severed at the roots

Yet in seeing you do I see myself, laying upon a timeworn shelf

How beautiful, I muse to see grandeur in something dark

To see the majesty in arcane fields

By the calling of a lark

To know you is to know of man

His follies, pits and woes

The most ominous of all his truths, for whats he reaps is what he sows

So latch the doors my child, and burn the beeswax candle bright

Come now to my open book, and I'll teach you wrong from right

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For what papyrus and pages soaked in blood and glory

Tread lightly on the ginger path my child

and I'll tell you

the original story.