Heavensent

Take a bit of care
Breathe in the air
This ain't nowhere
It's coming at you like a love  prayer
There is no one
Can feel what you do
Body and mind
It's gonna see you through

chorus~
Don't make sense
Be out of sequence
No recompense
Heavensent

Love you
Ain't no sin
Don't do yourself in
Begin and sing
Like you do
Fool proof
push me pull you
We're here
We're here

Wide open space
All around
No sound
A thunderstorm
Lightning bolt
No one's fault
A battle of will
Takes some skill
Don't kill
When you dream

King Lune

   
      

  
(Setting: A GATHERING IN A WOOD. ORC GUARDS BLINDFOLD PEOPLE OR PUT A SACK ON THEIR HEAD
TO LEAD THEM INTO THE WOOD WHERE THERE IS A GREAT ASH TREE WITH MASSY ROOTS
THERE IS A POOL BENEATH THE TREE AND AN ELABORATE CHAIR STANDS IN FRONT OF THE POOL
STRAPPED ONTO THE CHAIR IS A RAVING MAN IN A STRAIGHT JACKET)

FULK (Speaks slowly at first in an intoxicated or deranged manner in near darkness.
 As the speech in capitals proceeds, set light slowly increases)

BLOOD           WARM          STENCH          DEATH              EXPLODES       DESTROY                                                       RICH          WALLS       LIFE    BEARING         WOMB          DARKNESS          ALIEN  STARS
RAMPANT          WAR          FEAR  STRIFE         WITHIN            DELICATE  MIND            SHATTER                       
APPEAR : GHOSTS
dar
FULK



I am the Jack of Night
I am the Werewolf's Bite
I am the corrosion of day
I am dark uncertainty
I am the absense of light
I am second sight

Listen to my story that I spin
Let my beguile begin

I saw how it was
Exacted my rule
Dictated
To fear-numbed scribes
Always my autocracy
Bettering bettering
Standards of living
For never there was as
Glorious reign as mine

We came we conquered
My historians recall my
Deeds of supremacy
Over the  craven barbarians
Wandering tribes of no over-lording Master
Who did they think they were?
They were not to be suffered
Why do I still feel them about me?

I rearranged the facts
I invented scenarios of the past
That never were
And you took me on my word
For I had seen it myself
Later generations never guessed
The difference

My play has worked for all time
Let none defy me
You need me
To tell you what to do
Believe me
I do not deceive you

There is too much chaos
There is need for law
Anarchy breeding
Totalitarianism is what I saw

I rode with the Mongal Hordes
And broke the walls of Peking

We rode against
The established Kings
As quick as our horses would fly
Ghengis Khan, his sons and grandsons
Brought low the noble Russian
Empires fell and burned
To the earth we scorched
Those alive realigned
To the service of the Khans
All were made subject
And the subjected
Could never forget

The Tribes were always fighting
S o unsophisticated
It wasn't any good
They had to go

A centralised power
So much more efficient
And simple
- at any rate, handy for me

And don't go listening
To any of these swatty
Tooled up archaeologists
Modern historians
With their new ideas
What can they know?

I was there
My official stamp on the records
What could common people know?
And if they knew, what could they do?

Now, as in any era
Much is erased
Deleted
Deemed superfluous
'D' registered
No word of a lie
But the truth can be too much
For Hoi-Polloi
To comprehend
It would make people too excited
And interfere with protocol
So I am sure you must see
How this requires
A judicious grasp of truth
A sense of economy
You know it makes sense
Their technology had become outmoded
-I brought better
Betterer
Betterest
The heathen infidel deserved
To die a horrid death
And their way of life to be overwritten
I tell you no lie

All other systems are null
Accept my cheerless dictum
There is void without me
I stand over the emptiness
Of your minds
I shut the tap of the imagination
With propaganda
You require me to rule you
Are useless without me
A headless creature.
Oh, just to think
Of your puny efforts

Yet I was taken

My own guards did not recognise me
They it was who brought me down here
  the torture room of my dreams
I am the thrice failed father of fake
Twisted with my own dexterity's misapplied skill
Upon the spindle of the Norg-Sisters
Trapped in the twirls of turn of fate
To see,
A world stripped to hideous
A world begat of my contagion


I enduce nausia in all who behold me
For tho dead, I still possess mass
And mass still possesses me

I crystalised into a rock face
I obsessed it and it obsessed my ruthlessness
A million milliard crystalline connections
Of electrical evil coursed through me

But I took it all too far!!
I am crime
I am doing Time, making old Chronos happy

I am the pillaged rubble of golden cities
I am the dust of worlds
I forgot myself
I went through the meat-mincer
I shot out through the Pliedies
I wore Orion's belt
I was punished
I was cut into nine pieces and it was ordered
That I be scattered to the Universal poles
Nine Muses carried my Nine pieces
Far, far in their nine directions
But never far enough

I blazed forth a blinding light
That shot across space. my Death Ray Vehicle
And voiceless surrounding emanation warriors
Pulsing about me as we streaked through the void

I am the returning cosmic Corialanus
And stand, rank upon rank of my aliens about me
Glowering at the misfortunes of your crushed race

Routine stuff, pleasurable enough :
It was all I ever dreampt of...

When; Not so! And more the fool I!
A child's catapault took me in the eye
And that was the last I remember


Oh drastic fall!
Oh desperation
How the angels now mock me in my misery
How far indeed have I descended?
Wallowing night after night in my self-contracted pain
Lingering now in this benighted place
A prison is it? I cannot tell



I am Lear, I am mad Henry and George
I am Theodin and any like him
My wits have been whispered to the wind
I am Mythic Arthur, Good Lionheart, Bad Lackland am I
I am Ap Nudd dancing beneath the Tor
I will have it known it before
 I have been
King Conn and all at Tara
I am the King of Delusion and the Deluded King
I have been the Albany Kings
I am all the successive Kings of Babylon
I am Nebecunezzer Agamemnon Rameses
Like King Soloman and David but cleveverer
I am Brutus who first stepped out from Troy
In Monmouth's dodgy testemony
I am misquoted Canute
I am Vortigen with the boats
I am Cadwaller
I am Confessor and Conqueror
I will wear each time a different face
For longtimes I would not speak your wretched race
I have been most unworthy
But I have been many
If I had been good I could have been Alfred
I could never inspire to that level
I never aspired to it at all
I am all  Great Pretenders in one
I am Plantagenet and Tudor and York
My geneologies impeccably matched
I am Woodvilles and Bolinbroke
Whose were not but who were up for the bash
By pope was I first crowned
I am God Emperor
I am the divine Right of Kings
I am Tzar I am Khan
I am Warlord I am Pharoah
I am Nuada
Nodens Silver Hand
I am  White King
I am  Red King
I am  Black King
I am the Green King
I am the Oak King and the Holly King
I am the Fay King
I am faking
I am the May King
I am making it up
I am King -Size, King pin and Fisher King
I am Herod
I am Frank I am King Clovis I am Charlemaine
King Kong and Elvis
I am King Coconut and Kin(g)ky
I am sinking and joking
Kingston and stonking
Sun King a drinking stinking
Hitchiking Viking
I am waking
Am I barking?
Am I waiting to die
Is this it?
Just gloom, alone
And madness self imposed?
Restrictment by these, mine own snares
Awaiting...judgement?
I didn't think it was true
It is so dim

 Arghh
Elves
With their silver eyes
With their song that haunts and fears me by the ears
The Elves
And their bright light
Always about now
The Elven Ones
They must have returned from over the oceans!
I thought I had eradicated them
But they are still here present
Still floating about
Aargh!
Will they never die?
Ha, it can’t be true
No, no it’s just my mind playing up
Ha, if I didn't know I was hallucinating
I would have said that I was seeing faces


RETRONORG

I am flashing in your wing-mirror
I will hit you from behind
Come on like a migraine
From the darkness of your mind
Suffercate you in remorse
Remind you most tortureously
That your life will run it's course
I am where you come from
My sisters will, by turn, inform you
Where you are
And where you could be going
We are the three Norg-Sisters
Destiny our knowing
Memories pleasant are there for the flowing
But also the tap that holds the crap
Back back but you can't turn back
Back but it's too far back for you
Mortal sod! To recall
We have you by the balls for
We know all
And care not for you at all
You were some King or other
Of all the known Realm
You had some flaws and then you fell
You were stripped naked and flayed
Branded and blamed
Enmeshed in chain where you remained
A reminder of their pain
Then jettisoned a stain
Yet you returned like rain
Drenching all in a secret shame
Now look at you!
You sad, idiot clown
An example to us all
The King who did fall
Don't look surprised
Look into my eyes
What do you see?
Mystery? destiny?
Nothing really?
I can see all the past yous
streaming out behind you
Does it make me laugh?
Does it make me cry?
Does it make me retch?
Well, I am less than indifferent
And it's not even much pleasure
To see your type come to the end of your tether

I know all that you have done
It's all routine to me

NORG FUTURA
I am the most alluring of the sisters of Norg
And your sort can never glimpse us at all
So if you can see me, you must be off your crust
I am a maybe
I am an if
I am a prediction in a glyph
I am a card that you pick
I am the entrails of a pig
I am a bag of bones you hopefully perouse
I am fear of and hope you wish not to lose
Always welcoming but not always welcome
I am unknowable yet malleable to will

Try as you may
I cannot be foretold
For silver or for gold
Riches as such may come to a man
And may comfort him a while against the ravages
Of Our Father Time
But in the end,
... in the end
I will always elude you
I am always ahead
But by then you will be dead

I am used as a promised land
But here you can never stand

I am not a game, but I am fair game
You may make plans but this is not how I am

There are too many causes to see what the course is
Which of coarse is too complex
For your mortals guess
You would have to be like us Norg-Sisters
You wouldn't like it

But it's not us that twist you
We just hold the cords
And make report
If it's bets you've placed
We can't be traced
You might get sad or glad
But either way, you are presently mad
The gambler's die roll and whose to know
Except me what your tangled cord shows

All that you cannot see
Is easily visible to me
In all honesty
In duplicity
Hopes come to naught
Failures turned out fine
Worries desires and wishes all wash out and change
In time
But like the rest of us
I couldn't care less
It's all exacted in the balance
Nothing left to happenstance
For you the future is fantasy
For me it is just day to day

So as a figment of your imagination
I might say
Use your situation
Before it uses you

PRAESENTIA
I am death to yesterday
Cruel and starkly beauteous an event staring you out
The bill held by a grim waiter at your last meal
I bind you now to and by the wrenching of your heart strings
With melodies that one day will be the last thing that you hear

I am gift of the present
I am nothing else

At your death, my jurisdiction over you will end
Obviously
I restrict your movement
YOU CANNOT BE EVERYWHERE AT ONCE!
Not now. Not, yet
The Limiters will not allow it
It is for your own good
It is better for you that you remain within the authorized zone
...and on my better side
For my sisters and I do the everywhere  bit
WE are the ones who hold your cord
And when we put our heads together
All hell can break loose for all we we care
What the Limiters restrict is no prob for us
Security?
We don't even have to slice them up to get past
They just split as soon as they hear us coming
We hold the key that unlocks the time capsule
Locked inside brother's cranium
Ooh, that will be colourful!

Retrus,! Futura! Praesentia!

All present and correct
Unfortunately for you
Destiny has brought us face to face
And there are certain, clauses

We will probably have to torture you
But it's your own doing

We are not intentionally malicious
We haven't looked at your files for years
I mean, we haven't examined your cord
We don't get out of bed for most of your types
nowadays
But there was a header on your file
 And all thought to get Thoth in
But it seems he was due to come anyway
With his baboon clerks, for your amusement
... and categorisation

Oh and to weigh your soul up against a feather
...Y'know, like he does
We were not going to crawl down here just for you
But unfortunate for us,
 Your cord had a special knotted glyph
You are some Royal Bastard son from our quarter

We're duty bound, weirdly

We quite like it when people go on a bummer
But it's not up to us that we should get that pleasure
That depends on what you have done in your life
And what you've got coming to you

You will have to look into the mirror
To see the beauty and the grotesque
To feel the suffering first hand

I am a gossamer thin dimension
So you don't get much chance to see my reality

But you get the ride
And that's as real as it gets

No guarantee of success or safety
Nothing to do with us

We hold the cards
We have your files
Some information will  come gratis
We may however require
Payment

Not that you have more than your skin to offer us
You are not my prisoner unless you want to be

I am the exact moment of opportunity
You are falling through me

And I am killing you
Slowly stripping you of moments

You have been free to do as you will
Heh heh, so hopefully I am going to get my thrill

Now, let's have a look at that golden cord of yours

(NORGS EXAMINE THE CORD}

ALL NORGS (sing)

(Song of the Norgs)

We are the Norg Sisters 1 - 2 - 3
Past, present, future - Destiny
We card and spin and weave the web
We know the timing of your death

   (chorus)
   Look out now we're watching you
   We know the things that you do
   Listen in, we know your thoughts
   Within our wyrd you are ever caught

We love to frolic by the memory pool
Meeting Kings, Queens, varlets and fools
They breathe your last and we cut their cords
We are the fate you can't ignore
(chorus)
Here at the roots of the World Ash tree
Nine days and nights hanging desperately
Odin stared far and deep into the void
Till he scried the runes to his great joy
(chorus)
The runes form a language made of trees
A battle there was for supremacy
A ring of the year these sentinels formed
Enchanted warriors wait the dawn
(chorus)
Now you are here we begin the end
Opposites within you start to blend
They were never separate anyway
King and Queen within all on a new day


RETRO
You, despicable wretch
Have been the order of things
For age opon age
But now all your pomp and glory
Have come to nothing
Bragger! Imposter!

All these things you did on their backs
 the people
You thought you were everything
But you are less than nothing

FUTURA
Your foolish hollow crown
Has sucked your fool-hood down
That's four 'O's in your name
For a foul bird-brained fool
A fowl that is a double fool
Thus a brace of 'OO's
And four for your broken balls
That's four nothings more
So forty thousand mllion fools
All in one, all in you
Fool head you are a fool's fool
And that fool's fool's foul coxcomb-fool is you

PRAESENTIA
Looks like you have lost that Midas touch
Once and for all
'The Dunce and Futile Thing'
 With your touch of reeking death

Back in the day
But that's all over now

RETRO
The people - not 'your' people
Have seen through you

FUTURA
The land - not 'your' property
Is disowning you with it's last gasping breath

PRAESENTIA
Your statutes - echo hollow
In the social craters they created

RETRO
It must have been so lonely at the top
But you won't have to worry about that any more

FUTURA
We have spindled up all your shadowy
Ministers
Your spinners and cozeners
Middle-men and medicene men
Professional con-men and licensed pirates
Dodgy clerks and conspiring councellors
Speculators and Regulators
Backstabbers these all

PRAESENTIA
We have watched them almost die
All half eaten now Fulk
You are the last, apart from
Gone insane remnants
Of a few of your cabinet

RETRO
No one is left to run the place
The country is gone to the dogs

FUTURA
These are the charges brought to your Disgrace
Straight from Thoth
And his baboon scribes who did the paperwork

PRAESENTIA
They await the immanent presence of your soul
Against which they will set as balance a feather

RETRO
Your charge is for raising monies from honest but duped
Persons of your claimed realm in feifs, tolls, taxes, fines,
Penalties

FUTURA
With purported aim of benefits, improvements and repairs
To and for all and sundry mending and making good
The fabric of culture

PRAESENTIA
Yet which
When examined further with
A brave and critical mind
Astonishingly revealed to be the
Source funding for the accoutrements of war
Against neighbours possessing simply the resources
That your solopsistic greed requires

RETRO
For systematic stripping of lands pristine
The creatures and minerals thereof
In so order as to gain supreme mastery and dominion
Over those whom you deemed subjects

FUTURA
In fact the subjegation of lives diverse
To the will that is yours
Through persuasions of a type exemplified...

PRAESENTIA
By violences of the mind and body
Both overt and covert
A sort of veiled blatancy
That misleads to then paralise with perfidy

RETRO
For equivocation in Law
Evading standards so to
Institutionalise murder as war

FUTURA
For making enormous glorification of killing for the state
For the con of the hero's welcome in projected after-lives

PRAESENTIA
The weight of a billion deaths!
Targets inked in first by your beaurocrats
To be destroyed by those mute armies of yours
Who believe the hype of your propaganda

RETRO
For you made it seem the noblest calling
But we can and will just call it murder
Can't we Fulk

FUTURA
Your day is done
The money's gone
You've killed them all
 - by proxy that is

PRAESENTIA
There is nothing left
Your policies have sucked the well dry
All resources have been consumed
In the fervor of your industries.

RETRO
Your pleasant land is dust!

FUTURA
Science that you sanctioned has run wild
And delivered us a realm of pollutants
Before unknown

PRAESENTIA
Fine fun for you while it lasted

RETRO
We watched impartially
As you demolished like a craven beast
The habitat which you in fact
Share with other beings
We appear now to mark the occasion
Of your demise

FUTURA
And we watch with impartial pleasure
... don't we sisters?


PRAESENTIA
What with your life flashing past
You will have trouble working out
Which of your illusions
Is just that
And which is real

RETRO
But you can babble about that to Thoth
He is as unremitting as the iron shackle returns
On deeds that you must have loved at the time
But that which now bind you to your miserable fate

FUTURA
As we said, his baboons have done your admin and grim it looks
Your poison thumb has sickened so many pies

PRAESENTIA
The apes have traced it all
Nothing that they miss
And you are quite something!
Something times nothing
Is nothing
So they have exposed you for what you are

RETRO
Your clerks have been run in for their collusion with that
And are being held by the Orcquisiton
Har har... funny!
...and they squealed on you.

FUTURA
Your Chancellor has alledgedly been fed to Nydhogr
That fucker made our beast ill
Don't your men die?
Lovely Nydhogr can't digest all the black slime
Oozing out of that Osbourne's stomach

PRAESENTIA
Nydhogr has to take a rest and we've got
You just can't eat a spectre so easy like
So we've had to mute your Chancellor




RETRO
We spun his tongue
Savages aren't we!
Could get a King's ransom for all that silver

FUTURA
But the Elves won't touch it
Neither the Orcs or Gnomes

RAESENTIA
So they melted it to a thread and strung
Your lot up on it for Mama Spinner
Then after that it's all a bit of an anti-climax really
For us, not for you that is

RETRO
This is your spindle
It is the cord of your life
Your thread


FUTURA
All that you ever have been
Is coded on it's length
Length being an important factor

PRAESENTIA
It begins at your birth
And ends at you death

[THEY EXAMINE CORD]



RETRO
It is usual to start at the beginning

FUTURA
Delivered breech-birth your mother's life ended moments later and your father cried
Grief made him insane and drove him to commit acts atrotious and suddenly die

PRAESENTIA
You were pampered and feited the Boy-King by a delerious court
 sodomised repeatedly by your surrogate father till the age of ten

RETRO
These formative experiences formed a perfect foundation for your future career

FUTURA
A total military at your thumb you ruled all the way to hell
A reign maker of terrors
A taker of taxes
A lover of flattery

PRAESENTIA
You became, swift as night, all that power corrupts
Your life - a million miles from all others
Sustained - by those million remote lives
The humanity that you were bereft of formed an all-maligning hatred -
A gap that separated you from all others-
A grande gaping gargantuellian fissure left as legacy of your father
Now grown beyond all conceivable dimension
Matching and feeding your inner abyss

RETRO
Nothing could have pleased you more, yet it did not occur to you
That you yourself were feeding on a wholly greater nothingness

FUTURA
You did indeed, swiftly as day follows night
Become the greatest fool of all
He who had sucked himself out of himself
Through true hallucinations of grandeur

PRAESENTIA
Hey Fulk!
Any feelings of remorse?
Are you just a despot King gone Madcap?

RETRO
Forgetting about any notions of hell or soul even
We have nothing to prove and we have nor offer proof

FUTURA
In this story we just do the thread
Thoth is much more on it and he does the scales

PRAESENTIA
Here he comes now from the shadows







THOTH
Greetings sisters
Are we about to start a game
We are certainly not going play properly
We will use my cards
It all leads to Death
Three courses of time
All inter-meshed

Jack and Varlet Page and Knave
Down they go faces displayed
Thoth is dealing Dead Man's Row
Thirteen dead men all stone cold

I am Thoth
My head is the curve beaked Ibis
Upon my crown I bear the horned crescent moon and disc
I am sometimes  Dog-Ape
My personal scribes are baboons
Anubis is my hound
I am the true Universal demiurge
At Heliopolis my world egg crack'd

I, by voice alone creation fashioned
To birth sonicked four Gods, four Goddesses too
Where Khnum, City of Eight was made
By those eight Gods and Goddesses true
They sing hymn to the evening
They sing hymn to the night
They sing hymn to the morning
Turn, turn sun-wheel bright

I was murdered Osirisis's vizier and scribe
And facilitated his resurrection
My voice moving through the worlds
To return my master's spirit to his body
Augmenting my magic spells and incantations
With the splendor of it's sound


Osiris slain
Was made to life again
From dismembered raised

It was I, Thoth who did this and helped child Horus too
Who when with his mother Isis he was emperilled
By venom of a scorpion's sting
I it was
I drew the poison out
The Gods had commanded thus

I am called 'He who judged the two companions'
For Horus I favored over Set

I have been Vizier for Osiris and then in turn his son Horus
As they the Earthly realms ruled over
Then I ascended to the Throne
And ruled with peace and wisdom
For three thousand years and a third


I invented all the arts
All the sciences
Geometry, arithmatic, astronomy, geomancy
divination, medicene, surgery, embalming,
forensics, acoustics, musics
and especially writing

Writing to remember them
Hieroglyphs to recall
So that you can remember them
Archived on a scroll

I am the first Magician
I am called 'Lord of all Sacred Words'
I am Thoth thrice Magnificent

I endured my long tenure upon the Earth
-Three thousand years and three I reigned-
Then to the skies I rose, the Moon to serve
As she holds her orbit's swerve
And you watch her changing belly's curve

A seventy second part of her I won
When chess I played with the silver Moon
So five days over cold solstice I hold sway
I am named 'Ash-Te-Huti'
Astral guard to my Mistress
I measure the motions of my Sovereign
Lunar Deity
And divide the days and years
A calendar year wheel I have made
Of which mine is the first month


At Edfu, you may observe
The completeness of my accounts

It was I who from overseas brought
Treasures for the Egyptian Gods

Upon the sacred tree of Heliopolis
I scripted the names and lineage
Of all Kings
And upon it's golden leaves
I prophesied the name of the future
Pharaoh

I was heralded scribe and clerk to Ra
Who wished to know what I had known
And who lit the Underworld in my place
As I sojourned my seasons in the sky

My office in that lower place
I maintain
And there
I officiate over the dead before Osiris
Weighing souls against this feather
I proclaim the verdict
In my clear resounding tone
My baboons carving those fates
On eternal tablets of registry


And 'Reg'-istry is King's history
And Fulk...
I know your name

I preside over the world since ancient times
And have held office
Administrating for dynasties long dust
And I remember you Fulk

So, it is I who have come all this long way
To judge your soul
And that time is near

For your candle is guttering
Yet you cling to life
Look into my eyes
The eyes of Thoth
I who hatched the World-Egg
I read the matter of your existence
It is held within the torqued banks
Of your iris
Inside the pools of your pupils
The void of the window of you

There your flickering light
Is dancing low yet not gone
There is yet time before
I place this feather
Against your soul
It's weight against the other
Upon my scales

How many deaths Fulk?
How many killings in the name?
I am sure you laughed at the protests
But the little children, the horror they...
It was all...your scheme...
You believed...

Judgement is here now Fulk
Your cards are a 'split-mix-fix'
I mean some I just picked blind
Some I chose myself
Some I changed

First up :
You are only swords and staves
Which makes for a violent ride

The Devil really did pop up
Immediately and again later -
So he's definately here

Remember the Death card is a fixed thirteenth man
It all ends in Death
What's important is your journey and ultimately how you greet Death

I fixed the whole thing of course but there is only one distant
Nano-gramme of compassion or good numbed up in you at about
Fifty thousand fathoms and you've just run out of lucky stars
Anyway, the cards do my crust in, I just make up whatever fits

FULK
I don't believe in all that clap.
"One life only" It says so on the bumper sticker.
You want me to be frightened?
What of, Nihil?
A black hole of...Nothing
Matter antithesis
My own shadow?
Your taunts about
Afterlife haunts
Heh heh!
Hardly makes me quiver
We disproved all that long ago

THOTH
You won't mind our little game then?

FULK
You can't hurt me with a silly game

THOTH
Oh, we don't intend on hurting you at all.
WE couldn't if we tried
It's Nydhogr you want to watch out for in that department
Hogr and Ungoliant of course I might add
What could three girlies and a shadow like me
Do to the Great Fulk anyway?

PRAESENTIA
The Nydhogr works for us now . We got rid of the Ker.

FULK
Nydhogr?

FUTURA
Yes the charming little creature
He's about somewhere

RETRO
But he's in pieces
You'll have to guess him

FUTURA
Oh it's child's play
Like playing with bricks or dominoes

FULK
That doesn't sound too bad
I thought you said you were going to torture me?

PRAESENTIA
In a manner of speaking yes
- but really you are just torturing yourself

RETRO
We just appear as part of the programme
- to make it more of an occasion. Yes

FUTURA
You just answer as you can and when you have made
A total fool of yourself

PRAESENTIA
Or rather, revealed yourself unwittingly
as a tragic waster

RETRO
Of life, or use of limbs and other faculties, your own and of others

FUTURA
Then Nydhogr will take you out and that will be that
We will leave it to your imagination but Nydhogr is a serpent
Who breathes fire at both ends
Whose body has thirteen sections
Each section a riddle
If Nydhogr can't be bothered with you
We'll leave you here for Ungoliant to pick up

Bets on 7 - 1 Nydhogr has no taste for the bugger and leaves
'im trippin' savage hangin' up for Mama Spinner!
Heh heh heh!





THOTH
Ladies! and Fulk
Your attention please
Let us play

Twelve cards have I
The thirteenth has us players
Soon enough you will
Cry of your pangs of love and pain
Then begone and never be seen again
Twelve cards I will now deal
The thirteenth's face will to you be revealed
See your little life depicted
And riddle then the sygils encrypted
Watch you life flash before you
It won't take long once we've begun
I'm not laying bets with you girls
Because you know his fate up front

Number sixteen Tower Struck Down


The Keep of the realm
The Tall Citadel
The Bastion of defence
Is in flames
Men and women
Are throwing themselves
From the windows
Falling to their deaths
A King's crown topples
From it's high crest
Struck by a bolt
In the blackest of skies

RETRO
Sounds a bit like you Fulk
That's good for starters Thoth

FULK
I am in full control of my self
Do I not, even now, sit in this great chair
You can topple my tower
And I am still in power
I placed my deal long ago Thoth
And you can't frighten me
With my own propaganda!
Topplin' crowns is my buisness
As you can see
I've too many fingers in too many pies
And just put on another stupid mask
Fools them everytime

THOTH
You are deluded Fulk
Look where you are
Your course of history
Stands at a particular point
Not just for you
Glibly put, the causes you furthered
Have brought us to a place
Where the order of Kings
Will be the Termination of Things

PRAESENTIA
Check it out Fulki
Look into the Mirror of Gnomimirrom

FULK
I will not

RETRO
Well then, you must answer this riddle:

"What is always ahead but never seen"

FUTURA
Nice easy one that

FULK
It's staring me in the face-
My Eternal role of Omnipotent Omniscience
King of King of Kings
Forever flowing fast forward for a firstly Fulk friendly
F U T U R E ! Obviously
Future it is
But is this quiz for a child?

RETRO
And you have grown so far

THOTH
Card the second number twenty, it is:
Judgement.


To me Fulk, this is clear enough
Come-up-ance for any wicked stuff
Against my feather you will see
The balance of your destiny

PRAESENTIA
It's not necceserily so simple as it sounds
But it works out the same

RETRO
So we brought in Thoth and his
Accountant Baboons
Who have done your paperwork
They have accounted for everything

THOTH
It's not over yet
It's what I call 'Aeon'
And I can't and won't try and don't need
To convince you
That an Aeon is a long time

FULK
I have done nothing wrong
Because who is to decide?
You and your follysome baboons
Why do I have to feel
Responsibility
To anyone
Go on
Unify me, make me feel one
Then I can begin to learn to love
Those bastards out there
But until then
I can find no reason
To think of anyone except myself
Even though I keep becoming
Different people

FURURA
All shades of the same
Look into the mirror

FULK
I will not!

THOTH
We must pass on quickly now the game is begun

PRAESENTIA
"I know a word of letters three
Add two and fewer there will be"

FULK
That's curious
It gets smaller
As it takes more
What if it took so much
That it disappeared
Ha ha
Or became less than zero
Then it would be an un-thing
Not a something
'Add two fools and fewer fools there will be'

PRAESENTIA
Having trouble Fulk?

FULK
Lesser letters is less
So fewer fools is a few
It is "few"

THOTH
Well done Fulk
That's two child level riddles under your belt

RETRO
But you were not a
 very nice child were you
Though your parents were despicably cruel
To you from infancy
So I guess for you
It was how things were in the world
You had ambition but no imagination
To see things from another perspective
Or another's point of view
And continued a daily regime into adulthood
Of violence for violence's sake
A theatre of violence to keep things in shape
To force a yolk upon masses you knew not
And to cream the milk of their life's toils
Giving nothing back but enchainments
And the call to arms and to consume

FULK
No no no
It's because they love me
They work happily for me
To further the Realm
They give their lives
Because they love me
And believe in me
Their God-Emperor

THOTH
Ok
The third card I deal is number three
And the Three of Swords


Much to to your pity
And dolores
A red heart is
Thrice lanced
By blades three
All under a mis'rable sky
That weepeth full sorrowfully

PRAESENTIA
This is a bit near to the bone isn't it Fulk/

FUTURA
Straight through the heart
If you ask me
Look at that card
Does it bring up anything for you Fulk?

FULK
My heart was long ago beaten and broken upon the anvil
So that any impurities of feeling in it
Unrequired for my office
Be rendered swiftly
A non-liability in each case
Thus to my human sentiments
That grow from the weeds of my naive youth
I repressed each in turn
So as to your knives-in-the-heart
I feel nothing
I am impervious

THOTH
Very well
Now moving on from riddles so fully novice
And leaving a hint re. the running of your office
Will you look into the mirror now
Before you the tertiary test attempt to trow

FULK
What is it about this mirror?
Why do you keep on about this mirror?
And what do you mean test?

PRAESENTIA
You say you were tested at the forge
When you were smelted
Your heart never yet melted
But beaten into submission
Became keen in precision
So let us see the metal you are made of
If your metaphor holds strong
That is the test we have made for you
We will see the results before too long

FUTURA
"Who makes it tells not
 Who takes it knows not
 Who know it wants it not"

FULK
Hrmph! Sounds a sorry secretive
State of affairs if you ask me

PRAESENTIA
Or perhaps Affairs of State
If the truth be known

FULK
Something that if you know what it is
You don't want it
What's the point in that?
Unless...
You are tricking someone
With something you have made
That isn't what it is supposed to be
Isn't what they think it is...
Has to be money
Forged money
Counterfeit money that's it!
And what's that got to do
With Affairs of State
I'd like to know

THOTH
Yes but you blocked the enquiry

Next card is the Five of Staves
Behold the enquirant beset by problems
Of internal strife
This could be factions within one's Kingdom
Or within one's self

FULK
Just pay them off or send in the troops
AS regards my inner self
I AM the Realm
I'll get the money back in taxes
Soon enough

FUTURA
You have an answer for most things
With your voice commanding and bold
But soon will come a polarising of your view
To the opposite of that which you now hold

RETRO
Then things will settle out

PRAESENTIA
And you may come to realise this:

FUTURA
That there is nothing holding you up

PRAESENTIA
That you are standing upon an abyss

ALL NORGS (sing)
Hoop-La! Hoop-La! Hey Nonny Noh!
Johnny's through the Hoop-La don't you know
A Hoop-La is a jolly big 'O'
Johnny's through the Hoop-La don't you know


FULK
Don't talk crap
No one can stand on nothing
You'd have to be No One or dead
And not even then
Maybe figuratively speaking
Suspended on a big O
Oh nO!
I can feel myself beginning to go
Where I don't know
Where am I?
Quick, cling to the rim of this big hole!
Back again, where was I?

RETRO
"One sits still
Two consumes all it is given
Three makes a fast exit"

THOTH
Where did he get these gags from?!
Anyway, go with it

FULK
It is a metaphor of the times
A prophesy for the Rulers
Of the Future
The All-consuming genius -mind
Of a centralised power
Rampant and throwing off all transgressors

PRAESENTIA
Aim a little lower mighty one

FULK
The Three children of Drax the Giant?

FUTURA
No. You are penalised
It's Stove, Fire, Smoke

RETRO
So are you going to look in the mirror - yet?

FULK
I don't see no mirror

PRAESENTIA
Then you do see one. "don't see no"
That's a double negative.

FULK
I'm not being negative!

THOTH
The next card is the King of Swords



A pale faced ruler tall and grim
Throned ancestrally clad in ermine
Sword ready in hand
Surveying his land
The wide sky witnesses his Lordliness

FULK
There in all my glory sit I
Don't I look magnificent
Don't I strike awe into the heart!
Don't you just want to be like me!

THOTH
Watch out Fulk I'm channeling Alfred
Incoming King! Incoming King!
I hereby absolve myself of complicity
With ideologies not of my own begatting
Spoke when channelling noteable others
And sign myself over contractually
For the period to Alfred's Agents
No. 2 the Mound, Athelney. Somerset

Presenting Alfred the Great:


KING ALFRED
Absolute rot of stuff and nonsense
Come on out where I can see you boy
Where's that serial userper
Call yourself a King
You are just clinging
Limpet
King Limpet
Up yer arse Jack
You don't even know you're born
Think the people love you do you?
Do you really?
Well, boy, it's give and take
Or have you never heard of
Each bringing something to the picnic?
I must just sound like a King Nag of Nig
But I don't hate you
I was expecting this
And did what works I could
To stem the tide of detritus like you
Who have never done anything
For the people
To make them call you Great
In any sense
Apart from the perjorative
You Great Tosser

I'm off now
Do better

(ALFRED LEAVES THOTH)

PRAESENTIA
There you have it Fulk
Look into the mirror
  
FULK
No

PRAESENTIA
"A case with no lock or lid
Yet a golden sun inside is hid"

FULK
That's impossible!
How can something so big get in
It's like saying that people
Are intrinsically free
Or some tosh
About discovering yourself
To be discouraged!
The sun shines only
Out of my arse
The riddle is about me
I am a case full of sunlight

RETRO
Wrong

PRAESENTIA
It's an egg you oaf

FUTURA
Why do you think everything is about you?

RETRO
We have a song about someone's neggs


Jack's codpiece was stolen along with his two eggs
By the naughty cuckoo who laid her eggs next
And fooled the pea-fowl that they were all hers
Till Jack was cuckolded worse and worse
Though Jack could feel the cold on his nads
He just would not perceive that he'd been had
And continued to strut about the place
As people quietly laughed when he turned his face
The crested pea-cock made such a display
When he saw the eggs cracked at the dawn of the day
But when the pea-cock crow clocked at Jack's two broken crocks
He belooked that nothing indeed therein there was
The conning cuckoo had come in the night
Fooled the fooled pea-fowl and sucked those eggs dry
Leaving four crowns in the codpiece for posterity
And in that codpiece were founded four lost cities
Of which but sad the tale there is to tell
Their holy well is just a hole and not very well
That nurtures nothing to the first holy ground
   For the albumen had been for the elder men
   And the yoke had been for the younger folk
The cuckoo had grown and swallowed the Throne
Leaving Jack with no Kingdom and nothing he owned

RETRO
And let that be a warning to you

THOTH
Next is a nasty card
Funnily enough it's all about deceptions
But of course you know nothing about that

FULK
I know nothing about deception

PRAESENTIA
You seemed to know something about everything

FUTURA
Maybe you call it 'self-furtherment'
And file it under company policy

RETRO
How many denials have you left
Sheltering your head-in-the-sand
From the inevitable inescapable
Hole in your hollow crown?

THOTH
The Eight of Swords


Told you it was all sticks and swords
It's cos you never gave so much
So there can be no cups
No profitable pentacles neither
Cos you were ever the miser
But the Eight of  Swords is you Fulk on the inside
Trapped within your own world-wide lies
You have backed yourself into a corner
Avert your fate or you will be forlorner
The mirror's surface is gleaming
You cannot escape it's meaning
Look now
And avert a greater tragedeos

FULK
I will not look in your trick mirror
Take it away

FUTURA
"Eliza, Elizibeth, Betsy and Bess
They went to the woods to find a bird's nes'
They found a nest with four eggs in it
Took one a piece and left three in it"

FULK
Who are they?
What's their game?
Stealing eggs?
Not mine I hope!
No one's going to steal
My eggs
A gang of girls
Abject horror
So many of them
And no escape
When they come with their nasty
Thievy girl hands
Urgh
But where did they hide
All those other three eggs
It's done with fake eggs that's what

PRAESENTIA
Is that your answer? Fake eggs

FULK
I, er

FUTURA
Fulk, the fours names are all a '
der-der-derivative
Of the one name Elizabeth
They are the same name
So it's the same girl
And she took only on egg 'apiece'

PRAESENTIA
Just one girl
Not four
So you don't need to feel
Too floored
But you lost the round

THOTH
Now I did some tinkering with your cards
But this beastly fellow
Kept falling out of the pack in his enthusiasm
The Devil


Self explanetary really
And he's raring to go
Good job it's only a game eh!
Not really sure what to add about this guy
Maybe you'll see a bit of yourself
It wouldn't be a show without him

(FULK CATCHES A GLIMPSE IN THE MIRROR)

FULK
Arrgh!

RETRO
Think carefully now Fulk

"Often held, seldom touched
Always wet, never rusts
Sometimes wagged, sometimes bit
To use me well, use well your wits"

FULK
The Mirror!
I saw!

PRAESENTIA
Yes but don't think about that now

FUTURA
Just because you saw it now
Doesn't mean it wasn't there all along

RETRO
Concentrate on the riddle

FULK
Often held, never touched
It's not rude then?
Never rusts?
It's not metal then
Wagged and bit?
Hmm, some kind of dog?
No, it's something you use
Are 'Wits' a kind of cigarette paper?

THOTH
Time's up
It's a 'tongue'
And we're just out of Wits papers


FULK
The Tongue
The people who make these up are too clever for their own good

PRAESENTIA
Well the riddles can help excersise the mind

FULK
My mind doesn't need excercising
It's as fit as the day I bought it

THOTH
Moving on swiftly now

The Queen of Swords


Seated upon her ornate Throne
Looking so Right and Regal to Reign
Yet she the unscrupled perfidious Queen
Wo cares not for you and feelings feigns

And so good looking these evil Queens
Got to have your wits about you

What's the matter Fulk?
Someone you recognise?

FULK
She was so cold
She got through all my defenses
She was cruel
She said she loved me
I thought she said she loved me
She dumped me
She took all I had
She took me to the cleaners!
Boo hoo!
Boo hoo!
She didn't love me at all!

FUTURA
OK then look in the mirror

FULK
Ah! Ah!
Is that me?
No-ooooooo
Darkness

PRAESENTIA
"What is loved more than life
Hated more than death
The contented desire it
The poor have it
The rich require it
Misers spend it
Spendthrifts save it
The dead carry it"

FULK
Deeper darkness
Falling through a hole in the sky
I am standing on the abyss
No one's home
I am nowhere
These words are impenetrable
Or they seem to be
I cannot tell
The Queen of Swords
Took my sight
All now is blackness
Only your word riddles
Hold any faint incandescanse
But what is this curious commodity
That seems the opposite in each case
To that which one would expect?
Maybe it's contrariness can explain my predicament
I, Emperor Omniscient
Surveyor and Overlord of Everywhere
Ruler of the wide realms and
Arch-arch-Commander in Chief
Is Nowhere
I, King of the Infinate Hegemony
Master of Everybody
Has become a no-body
And I own
Nothing
That is the answer to this riddle

PRAESENTIA
Very good Fulk
At least we now know where we stand
Live by the sword, die by the sword
Oh, and here come more swords!


THOTH
Pierced by ten great swords
He lay slain in the wilderness
The black night gathering
Over distant mountains

That's the Ten of Swords Fulk
And pretty devastating it must be
To fall so far
It could happen to anyone of course
But if you burn all the bridges
Then there is far more chance
Of being left to die
When it comes to it
Do you get a feel for the way this is all going?
Another two cards till Death
Another two till you die
It's not actually a very good, or funny game at all
Would you care to look in the mirror?

FULK
I can't, she took my sight

RETRO
This one will tease you

"Walks in the wind
Runs in the rain
Makes dry oceans in the sun
Counts time
Stops clocks
Swallows Kingdoms
Gnaws rocks"

FULK
Great Monsters! Who is this fearsome being?
I will be afeared of it
But ever will I guard my Realm
With elite warriors
Against it's coming
They shall advance in the van
They shall man the battlements
My eternal guard against the foe
Ever protecting
Ever watchful
This terrible adversary
Will be brought down
And presented to me
Head on a spike
It's power forever nulled

PRAESENTIA
Your sentinels must be sleepless
Your warriors infinatly tireless
Your horses inexhaustable
Your archers ever true
Your strategies foolproof
Your fools...
Your fools given license
To observe and report
Your great folly
Then all your vast forces
Plentiful in aggression
Will as of one man
Make a great laugh
And they will laugh because
They know better than you
That this enemy will forever
Grind them down
And so better for their children's games
For they will play it it
Making brief castles - like your own
Yet made of sand Fulk
Made of sand

THOTH
Ok next round
When I was fixing your cards
Before the show tonight
I couldn't decide between
The Fool and the Moon
But as they both have
Two 'o's in them
That's two 'o's in a Fool
And two 'o's in a Moon
Which is four 'o's in all
Plus some consonants
However on close examination
Are they 'o's or zeros?
If they were zeros
The four would be nothing
Four times zero being nothing
Four equal nothing?
That can't be correct
I've mixed up my vowels and numerals
And a zero is a non numeral
But really, who can tell at such a great distance
That they are not indeed
Great hoops of flame
Or the Rings of Saturn
The Fool is card zero
And he steps gleefully
To the chasm's edge
Regarding all this while
The sky in his eyes
With head full one presumes
Of riddles, daydreams and song
The Moon is huge and melancholic
A big 'O' herself
Gazes down upon the Dog-Wolfs and Sea-Beasts
That she has drawn up on her surging tides

MAD BOYS ALL GO ROUND (refrain)


He made his love a garland all for her pretty head
It was a ring around the moon and this is what he said

(repeat refrain, etc etc.)

Eye to eye says I see you Eye says I got some
He put the ring into his palm and said "Now I got none"

Big eye to little eye says "Why are you so small?
If you were more small than small you'd not be there at all"

Little eye to big eye says "I am small but true
And as you are a stupid eye I can see through you

Big eye to little eye says "I hope this all ends soon"
Said Little eye to Big eye, "'Tis but early afternoon"

Mad boys all go roundall go round x 2
Mad boys Wild girls round the outside
Round the outside
Round the outside






RETRO
Where are you Fulk?

FULK
An blind sea creature I am
From such depths I never knew!!
I have no eye
I have other senses
I could be prey or predator
I do not know my nature
I am afeared. I am out of my depth
Or I my secret depth have descended
Deep am I now within the mirror

 THOTH AND NORGS RECITE:

THE INON

On the sun there was a flea
The flea was in a card game
The card game was on a wheel
The wheel was in a story
The story was on a tapestry
The tapestry was in a locked room
The locked room was on a cloud
The cloud was in a conversation
The conversation was on time
The time was in a castle
The castle was on a tea tray
The tea tray was in a conundrum
The conundrum was on a quest
The quest was in a melody
The melody was on a teardrop
The teardrop was in a bowl
The bowl was on a table
The table was in a forest
The forest was on a crest of a wave
The crest of a wave was in a dream
The dream was on a footstool


The footstool was in a joke
The joke was on a star
The star was in an armchair
The armchair was on a camel
The camel was in a slipper
The slipper was on a rosary
The rosary was in a lamp
The lamp was on the sea
The sea was in a basket
The basket was on a crescent moon
The crescent moon was in a void
The void was on a pin
The pin was in a crystal
The crystal was on a precipice
The precipice was in a clamshell
The clamshell was on a rainbow
The rainbow was in an acrobat's eye
The acrobat's eye was on the future
The future was in a pocket
The pocket was on fire
The fire was in a pulpit
The pulpit was on the wind
The wind was in an egg
The egg was on a boat
The boat was in a turtle
The turtle was on a mustard seed
The mustard seed was in a whale
The whale was on a four poster bed
The four poster bed was in a coracle
The coracle was on borrowed time
The borrowed time was in a plastic cup
The plastic cup was on an atom
The atom was in a unicorn
The unicorn was on the way home
The way home was in doubt
The doubt was on a spoon
The spoon was in a holy house
The holy house was on a golden wish
The golden wish was in a silver locket
The silver locket was on an angel's hem
The angel's hem was in a tiny casket
The tiny casket was on hold in winter on trial
In the belly of the She-Wolf Fenris who ate the sun

FUTURA
Your gazeless sockets
Count for two more 'O's
Or zeros
So they are all happily adding up to
Nothing

Or  "OO-OOOOOO"
Keep that going sisters

OWATAGITAMEYE

PRAESENTIA
Here's the ultimate clue for you
Before you push off
The key to your secret identity
That's been longing to get out all these years


Enjoy

Ohwhatagitameye
Ohwhatagitameye
Ohwhatagitameye
Oh what a git am I
Oh what a git am I
Oh-
What!

RETRO
You said it Fulk
But it's not over
Not just yet
Deep deep in your being there
Fathoms fathoms deep
Are there any...nuggets
Lying around?

FULK (groping about)
Well, there is one

FUTURA
Oh well done Fulk.
That's your last marble
Deep in the mirror
That cost you your sight
In payment for being able to see

THOTH
So look now Fulk
With your inside eye
And see the Wheel of Fortune
Held in the very clouds of Heaven
By creatures mythologic
That learned are in
The logic of your myth
Or,
Your journey's story
In precise and exacting detail
Of deeds done and the balance
Thereof upon your account
Which my Baboons are presently auditing
Anubis carries the great wheel aloft
Well out of the Underworld
And, fittingly, the Sphinx
A sharp sword in her hand
Waits atop with the penultimate riddle
But the card is also choice
Fortunes can be won and lost
They are always being used up
And there is not only material wealth and power

FULK
Submerged
Deep in Gnomimirrom
I hold my last
Moments
This marble
Containing
All my lost memories
Now rushing past me
All in a cascade
The many lives
I worthless lived
Though I held myself highest
Now is my ultimate test
To face those souls that I sent
To their deaths?
In their prime
For my glory
No don't think of them
They are just dead
And I will live forever
That's all there is to it

PRAESENTIA
"Who makes it needs it not
Who buys it does not use it
Who uses it does not know it"

FULK
What's the use in that?
Something you don't need
You don't use
And whoever uses it
...doesn't know it
What, are they asleep?
Why don't they know about it?
It's a bed sold by a company
That doesn't need more beds of it's own
Or what if they were dead?
Oh no
I know what it is
It's a coffin
It's my coffin

THOTH
Indeed
Though correct in the former, not the latter
We are not giving you a coffin
We are just going to split
And let Nydhogr and Ungoliant
Fight it out over you

Now we want to keep the show rolling
(if you could get ready with the snippers sisters)
We are bringing on someone
Very special in the riddle department
With a big hand to the Norgs
Their excellent riddle posing
But could you kindly step aside now
Presenting the one-and-only
Sphinx
Everyone put your hands together now
For Sphinx
Who brings you the original riddle




SPHINX
"What has four in the morning
Two in the afternoon
And three in the evening"

THOTH
Thank you Sphinx
I've always wanted to hear you say those words

FULK
Thoth, why do I have to answer these riddles?

THOTH
Well, there isn't anything better to do
And it is a bit of therapy for you
And some amusement for us...

FULK
Why is this whatever in the riddle
Changing number all the time?

THOTH
Because everything is constantly changing
Whether you accept it or not

FULK
Four then two then three
What has it got
It must be something quite sublime
Cos I cannot work out the meaning this time
Morning, afternoon, evening
It's all in a day
And come night time what?
And what are these things
That it says it's got
It can't be meals - too many
It could be medication but I don't think so
It could be bets down the bookies for all I know
But I think it is deeper and more profound
And more obvious too
Such as the stages
That one goes through
A noble path if you are that way inclined
Less than noble I am feeling most of the time
And what come the night?
Yes it's legs
Crawling babe on all fours
Then grown man on two
Then elder walking with a staff
Which makes three
Though evil I have laughed
At schemes of men
Save those of my own
Yet I secretly know
Though in armour I hide
My death shall come swiftly
When it does come nigh
For come it will
P'raps come it soon
And so then will end
The life of King Lune


Just because I called myself King
And wear this brow blistering crown
Don't for a moment think my type
Are a thing of the past
We've had the divine right of Kings
Been executed
And shifted stance to make us
Seem closer to the people
It's a matter of personal style
Some monarchs appear with
Some aloof
All use mercinaries
And recruits
Press ganged against their will
Or convinced with belief
People imagining they know the
Depths of  political intregue
Fools
All I had to do was mutate
Into another form
Sinking my command into the environment
Furthering myself by becoming obscure
Slowly being absorbed
Into the sub-strata of thought
Incrementally extending myself
Into something presentable
Mother's sons stockpiled for the power game
Still a ready resource
You have been a franchise in my name
Your loss my unworthy gain
Kings!
A subject to vast
For common people to grasp
You fools
You imbeciles

THOTH
Card Thirteen
Death


(THE NORGS CUT FULK'S CORD. FULK DIES)


Dead Man's draw
Dealt and drawn and done
Complete
The twilight of Kings is over
Come now the night
And new games dreaming
Come now the Knight
Of rearranged
Come to joust wordplay
Of a dawn day
This Knight by Fool we heard of
First by Prophesy summoned
Tho Fool of his words quoth
That he cannot know
But the Kscur came anyway
That Knight he spoke of
Has taken his cloak off
Beneath yon tree
I'm sure he'll lead us on
With a conundrum song
Of how and who he is
And where indeed he comes from
All hail the Left-Right Knight


THE LEFT-RIGHT KNIGHT

Ho ho ho hee he he
The Left-Right Knight is hard to see
Half sinister his body bright
He is half left she is half right
Arms and legs opposite in pairs
You think I am splitting hairs
The Left-Right Knight is both at once
Don't look at me like I was a dunce
The Left-Right Knight is he and she
In Quert orchard walks this mystery
Kscur Avalon is balanced quite right
Both left and right is the Left-Right Knight

He he hee ho ho ho
The Left-Right Knight wants you to know
Embedded in the language deep
Long forgotten rhymes that keep
Humans in a funny trance
Where in it is we never glance
At the side that least we use
So half our self it is we lose
Never learning from the left
We have ourselves in two halves cleft
Male and female dark and light
Hooray! Hurrah! The Left-Right Knight


                 END