Put herein forth in the most grand esteem,
The host and cast are prepared for witness
In their hopes of playing their roles full well;
For, though I should not so easily tell,
They are the persons who combined make me.
But not yet the sum of the truth here be,
For each is his own, those persons here put.
Thus told, digressions may now be expanded,
A quatrain to each, the greatest remanded:
But first, an exception must be allowed:
Jess, what little justice four lines can do,
Or any infinite verbosities;
I've not the wit to make well enough due
Of the way you have slain monstrosities
That have burdened my soul since early age.
I would thank you, but it can ne'er suffice.
You have given me more than any page
Can ever endure. You have changed my life.
I
At the edge of the world, a dancing child
Swirls a blue streamer through the midnight sky.
A star twinkles in the infinite wild
Beyond her, and I wonder at it: Why?
Not so far away, not so far at all,
The Jester anxiously awaits his cue.
His mournful jacket foreshadows the pall
The Director will soon be wont to rue.
The man with the hat with the silver fish
Glances at the Jester across the Stage;
He must feign not suspect the secret wish
That will be his undoing, reckless rage.
The couple, still met at the Dartford pub
'Neath the dreary light, indoor afternoon,
To limbo endowed by a flightless cherub,
Their banter intruding the ageless moon.
V
The girl with her pen at the water's edge
On a whim will create a boundless dream-
A world to itself, to its very ledge,
Restricted alone by her Muse's scheme.
And there are the giants stood all around,
Unburdened by purpose, so practical,
Their heights almost seeming to mock the ground
In the hope of divining spectacle.
And those beasts, all the living-just-to-die,
The sort which Dante put just out the Gates,
Will attempt (though will fail) their every vie;
Those folk have been cursed by the angry Fates.
The man on the ship falls down to his knees
As the soft light of hope drains out of him.
He is left to approach eternities
That, lost, ne'er recovered, were took from him.
And the Music Man weeps for his life's end
In the sad knowledge that he is the last;
He begs of the world to make one amend,
To surrender itself, doomed, to the past.
X
And still Honor weeps for the old defeat
As Love's deathly corpse decays in the wood.
He will never forgive his pained retreat,
Though he knows he alone could ne'er have stood.
On a concrete slab of the iron mall,
The Raven lets loose his final musing:
How the willow, in all its desperate sprawl,
Had the better o'er this, self-abusing.
Forever Incomplete
Dates of Expansion:
28 August 2007, undrafted to XI.
-: Jess is a real person. For Jess, Journal Entry: The Day Of, A Digression On Giants, Your Eyes At the Princess
I: Avalon
II: They're All Actors / Act IV, Scene 5
III: They're All Actors / Act IV, Scene 5
IV: The Spoils
V: The Giants and the Girl At the Water's Edge / To the Artist
VI: The Giants and the Girl At the Water's Edge / A Digression On Giants
VII: Avalon
VIII: Toward Doom
IX: The Last Days of the Music Man
X: The Spinner's Tale
XI: Retreat
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