I'm breezily clunking my way down
the scarred and nine-tailed roadways
My gentle steeds, though battered and old as well
March on with a certain enviable grace and disdain

What do I see?

Dark dressed flabby oafs stalk their prey
Headlights breathing down my neck
Wailing sirens leave me chilled
The jingle of metal looses fear down my spine
and I recall the reoccurring image of the drunken judge;

"I am but a jester of your kingdom
seeking counsel with my lady, your highness,
My Queen"

but the beast cannot speak
he growls anf grunts in a language
of fowl belches that singe
my inner cilia and leave me nauseous

And the boar-formed bipeds stare blankly
letting saliva slip down their ingrained frowns
And the terrible beast that calls itself libra
Gives the grunt for the boars to take me elsewhere

They motion their fat fingers down a long
dark
corridor
Down which I can still hear faint murmurs
of the Echoes of eternity
And though I do so seek to see the
young girl, lead so softly by fear, yet centered
with courage
I have other pressing matters to attend to

The boars have waddled just far enough along
to point their grubby gestures elsewhere
to a room with a large sycamore door
with a handle of rusted brass

The patterns in the wood slide against eachother
like oil against water
And I assume that my counsel is available
I open the heavy gates and peek my curious sight
into the shadow that seems to be the room's
only occupant

Until I hear the soft words of
your highness
slide from between her young pink lips
into the void of darkness
and to my heavy ears

"Oh my fool, is that you?"
A spark is followed by soft candle light
that somehow gives light to all corners of the chamber
and I see my Queen's beautiful face
lift from sorrow into smile
Knowing that I am now seen,
I softly smile and nod my head

...

We sit in quiet conversation under glow of melting wax
Her polite hands resting on a stack of papers
riddled with seemingly strange symbols
until she asks me,

"My sweet Magician,
how is it that thou art lacking the lines
of stress and countless sleepless nights
that so plague the rest of our haunted kingdom?"
And left answerless, I slyly slide a meager grin
and reply,
"For a man who knows well the furnace of
future and fate
seldom lingers in the toils of the obvious present"
Once again sweeping a smile over her weeping face
she gives me the words I came here expecting
and we sweetly part presence...

I'm back on tortured road, my steeds
no longer so steady, as hampered by the setting of Orion
on this late winter night
And my head, so filled with things beyond my
running mind, is throbbing in sincere agony
Wondering, wondering, wondering...