A Meeting In Marginalia

1.    Cir Talox Blithe

Call me 'Blithe', it was the name of my creator, or so I have written to myself from long ago.

More fully named I am 'Cir Talox Blithe', Knight, made, sworn and chosen for a path of honour and truth. One glance will show you that I am no man of woman born. I was made, long ago, from gears and levers, steel and screws. My eyes are crystal lenses, my guts burn charcoal and my heart is Iron. This gave me my title "The Knight with the Iron Heart", though it has never pleased me for I have always fought to be a Knight of Franchise and of Grace. My mind, I am told is a labyrinth of magic and glass, packed away within my steel skull in directions inaccessible to mortal hands, though I have never seen it.

Why I was made, I cannot say, for no precise instruction remains from that deep time, and even when that was is also lost. I have traced my personal history back near one-thousand years, chasing myths and legends of a knight of steel who likely was myself in former times.

My memory is little better than your own. I can recall perhaps one hundred years in detail. Past that I depend on written records and on this rod of enchanted glass which I carry always with me. This slender wand holds a library of my memories, however much I could retain, sometimes memories of memories of memories, condensed, abstracted and reorganised. This is my record of my deeper self which I can read by sliding it into my skull through a port at its rear. I must do this only when the fullness of my thought is directed entirely upon that act, should my focus slip my consciousness might become lost in memory, or irrevocably and chaotically changed by what it finds. This truly is my greatest treasure for it gives me knowledge of myself, and my place within the world.

Many quests have I undertaken in my long existence, but my current trial is perhaps the strangest I have known, for I must journey to Marginalia, the Hyphos, that uncertain realm of timeless madness, there I must find the Fey prince 'Shadowed-Summer' and bargain with him for the ownership of his Incalculable Palace of Lies.

Impossibility upon impossibility, for many do not believe in Marginalia at all, thinking it fiction, or hallucination. I though, do believe, I sense in the deeper structures of my memories that I have been there many times, though the details escape me, and I suspect that I have been dogged and bothered by the attentions of its residents before.

Still, this is the mission impressed upon me by my obscure yet mighty patron, and it was made clear that, odd though it is, this task is of utmost and absolute importance for the safety of reality itself.

Hence, I come to the Mountains of Reality, for it is here, if anywhere, that access to Marginalia can be found.

False Readings - Pre Release Spiel

The tides of inspiration are a mystery to me. When I look back through the records of this blog things seem to move in waves. At times I'm generating new ideas with astonishing fluency and sometimes winters raisure doth erase all.

There is no stability.

It seems currently the False Machine has entered Winter Mode, null-fields have been activated, windows polarised, etched-titanium storm shields are in place, tektite periscope down and gauss machines retracted and stowed in their upright position.

Outside the frozen leaves of nitrogen snow scatter against our eye-embossed iron hull and Moon Apes scratch in futility against the moon-bronze doors.

Presumably the situation will change, it always has before.

The general quality of OSR-DHD* blogs at the moment seems pretty high so you are in safe hands while I am dormant at least.


ANYWAY

That was my apology for not blogging but here is my message about a thing that has been made.

I got tired of waiting for numerous other already-written but slow-moving projects to be completed and spoke to Paolo about putting together a book.

(Ages ago Paolo had offered to publish my old 'A False Machine' book of collected blog posts but I ended up gazumping him on that to make money for birthday presents. Since then I have taken down 'A False Machine' as I wasn't very happy with it. Perhaps it will reappear in some form in the future.)

This book is not one of collected blog posts, although some things in here have appeared on the blog before, instead it is a book of fiction and fiction only.

More importantly for the prospective consumer, it is a book in which only HALF of the contents is finished and coherent, the other half is not.

A better title might be "Stories AND FRAGMENTS by Patrick Stuart."

"WHY" I hear you ask, "why would you dump on us Patrick, a book much of which is not complete?"

And the answer is; "Well in case you were into that."

A fuller answer might be; "As long as I tell you what's in it and you know before you buy, I can't see any negative to the consumer. As well as that, most of these things have something interesting about them."

Here is a list of stuff in the book:


The Possessing Verse - Complete story. Experimental second-person tale of a woman with a poetic brainworm in her head, told as a continual conversation between them with one half of that in verse. I'm still pretty sure that no-one has ever done this before.

The Isogyre - Sword and Sorcery story designed to be an exact number of words and therefore rather compact.

Knights of the Snail - Sir Bird Spiralling, Sir Duno Chrime. The Knights of the Sail is intended to be my answer to Mallory (Thomas, not Ortberg), 20 Snail Knight stories linked into a gigantic Saga, illustrated by Matthew Adams. It's true that I have only done 2 so far, as soon as BFR is done (probably in the new year) I will try to do the next three. After that, only 15 till completion! These stories do work on their own however and I consider them artistically complete even when separated from the whole.

A Map to Hell! - Someone asked for the story of how Ghar Zaghoun got the strand to his bow, well here is one fourth of it! Planned to be the first part in a four story sequence, this one nearly broke me. If people really want the rest and show an interest then I will probably try writing the second part but I will definitely be charging you for these as they are a nightmare to write.

I'ts 'Fiddlin' Joe Cooper vs Ghar Zaghoun in the towers of Jukai city with the story being a swapping first-person pov between the both of them.

Thieves in the Empire of Glass -  This was going to be the first part of a SAGA. Well it was too long. Prose takes me ages to write and even this much was a harassment. Still there is some decent writing and imagining and some good prose in here. As well as that you get to find out a bit more about the world and characters of The Possessing Verse and The Isogyre.

Biter - Underworld saga from the point of view of the Monster. Again, some decent writing. Again, unfinished.

I Kill A Man On Every Page - Strange semi-poetic super heroic action series, only a small fragment present but some ok writing.

A Traitor in Time - This is something you might be interested in. It was an experimental play in verse about time travel based on an old game idea by (I think it was) Brian Hollenbeck. This was one of the first game books I ever picked up in my adult life and I became obsessed with writing a play in iambic pentameter based on its premise. It peters out in the first act and you can kind of see the structure go wrong as I write but bits of this are pretty good and original.

On The Borders of Night - An attempt to do a literary multiple choice adventure book in iambic pentameter (or more general verse forms), some decent writing here.


The Death of the King of Ants - This is one of the earliest things I wrote where I didn't hate the writing. Its a classic old-school fantasy series based in... The Warhammer World!!!

A world which, appropriately enough, no-longer exists. Like everything else at the arse end of the book its unfinished and tails off but some of the writing, the description of the monsters in the surf and the attack of the Fire Fish, is pretty Ok I think.

.......

So there you go. If that seems like something that would be interesting for you to own then buy the book.

If you care about finish, appearance and minor details like spelling and punctuation, (if you care about grammar than its already way too late, no editor has been able to impose sane grammar on me) then good news, since it was put together by Paolo, unlike 'A False Machine' it doesn't look like a four fingered child made it in a refugee camp under threat of drone strike.

In fact is looks Quite Nice. Like a real grown-up book you don't have to feel ashamed being seen reading.

The front and rear covers, as by our ancient tradition, are by the wonderful and illimitable Scrap Princess.




*Old School Rennaisance - Doucebag Hipster Division

A Theory of Filmed Violence

I started thinking about a theory of filmed violence and, in brief, its this -

The symbols of violence that tell the story well on film are almost always bad things to do in real violent situations.

Maybe its simpler to say 'accurate violence is a boring story'.

Lets go through it one by one:


Sword fights. Fighting with swords for real would be like boxing with knives. Fast, brutal, ugly and difficult to discern what’s happening from the outside.

In any real physical fight both sides will work very hard not to signal what they are doing or about to do. The movement between any two positions or actions will be as short and fast as possible. There will be no unnecessarily wide arm movements, no unnecessary body movements. Short, clipped controlled movements that return quickly to their originating position and rarely 'follow through' or carry the weight of a contestant far from their centre of mass. Blades will rarely clash.

This looks dull and crucially, *doesn't tell the story* of the fight visually on film. On film all the movements will need to be extended, emphasised, made particular. Always over-extend your arm, always follow through with your body weight. The audience *wants* to see your body move. The shifting of your body tells the story of the act, the more it moves and the more visibly it moves, generally the better the story.



Boxing. I don't know much about this but I think its pretty true that in boxing attritional damage is a bad thing and you would almost never let an opponent 'wear themselves out' on you before you come back in force before the end of the fight*.

In real life, damage is bad. In boxing films, damage is excellent. You *want* both fighters to be visibly damaged. specifically you want the hero to be the more damaged fighter because every visible example of pain makes them more heroic for resisting it.

The boxing hero has to be beat-up towards the end. if they were just very good and won intelligently without being visibly physically hurt then it would have no visual or emotional impact. It would be like throwing away the language of film.

What goes for boxing goes to some degree for all other forms of physical damage. Getting shot is very bad and probably effectively incapacitating for almost all normal people no matter where you get shot. On film the hero *has* to get shot. Or at least clipped. it has to be physical and it has to be *visible*, without the visible example of danger and pain the hero isn't heroic.

*EDIT - ok this is apparently actually a thing people sometimes do.



Gun fights. Any time after WW1 if you are facing machine guns or artillery then you have to be some distance from each other. You need to be far enough away from each other that if someone opens up on you with a machine gun and walks it down the line there is enough time from the person in front of you dying and falling down and you seeing this for you to get into cover.

The trusty grunts dive into the trench or foxhole. They are all there, lined up and *in the same shot*.

"We're pinned down, we gotta get out of this Kowalski!"

Sure you do, but the reason you are pinned down is not because of tactics, its because the director of the film needed their principal story-carrying characters near each other, in direct danger, *in the same shot* so they are interacting socially just by being there and the audience can *see* this happening.

The trusty grunts will *always* end up pinned down together in a foxhole, or behind a wall, or in a room. The only thing you can say for sure about the place that they are trapped in is that it will be somewhere where you can point a camera at the whole group and *see* them acting together, exchanging glances, being in each others social space. That shot tells the story of coming together under pressure to achieve something difficult. It tells it better than simply filming the real thing would.

If everyone has machine guns really you want to be behind someone, in cover, at long-medium range so you can shoot them in the back. This looks terrible on film. Film wants everyone in the shot.



Archery. In Game of Thrones they actually lampshade this.

"Never hold your bow drawn, it loosens the string for no reason." - Also it tires you the fuck out because bows are heavy to draw and you are wasting energy. Just draw and loose in one movement.

Then later in the series during a siege *they do the same fucking shot*, a row of archers, arrows pointed up for a ballistic shot, even though the enemy are below, all holding their bows drawn for a really fucking long time.

I think the arrows are also flaming too.

Why? Because it tells the story of the violence better than the real violence would. The bow held at the draw gives the human body a powerful and tense visual signature. The muscles are literally held in tension, all they can do is release and you are just waiting for that to happen.

Having a bunch of archers in a row? Fucking cool, gives the image depth and perspective. Plus the sight of a bunch of people holding themselves in a uniform tension multiplies the signal of the single archer.

Adding flaming tips? Of course. Always do it. A more powerful visual signature. As well as that, always chase escapees and light your castle with flaming torches and never with candles or lanterns. The naked active fire on the torch is almost a character in itself and the fact that the person holding it must hold it like a weapon, upright, away from themselves, body in tesnsion, makes it better dramaturgy. A lantern hangs, a bare candle must be moved with slowly (always have candles in the scholars study *and if it’s a ghost story*, candles slow physical action down, torches speed it up.)



Weapons. Always too big. Real weapons have to be light enough to wield continuously for a long period of time. Warhammers and picks are small. The head has to be small to concentrate mass and force. A big wide head is dumb, a big wide sword is dumb.

Fantasy weapons have to be oversized so they can tell the story of the weapon better. Conans sword was so big and heavy only Arnold could actually wield it. The sword of Goderick Gryffendor was designed originally to be held by children and looked big in their hands. In the final films, in the hands of adults, it looked too small.

Guns don't always need to be super-big but they should have all kinds of extra crap bolted onto them like laser sights and extra magazines and little pointless clips.

Guns and swords both need to make much more sound than they do in real life. Guns in films clatter like dice bags every time an actor even touches them.



Helmets. Helmets are the most important piece of armour that anyone will ever put on. Except maybe a mail shirt or kevlar. But in general, if you are wearing armour and not wearing an helmet then you are fucking insane because you keep your brain in there and you need that.

Yet in film people are continually losing their helmets. Often they get shot off or lost in battle some other way. Sometimes the main hero becomes such a super-soldier that "helmets just slow me down maaan". Generally if a film can find any way to get the helmet off, they will.

Why? I think because it fucks up the transmission of story energy from the face. Helmets (and hats) surround the face, change the profile of the skull. They look dorky in real life. They look even more dorky on film because a huge amount of information about the way someone’s body and personality and presence impacts the world is simply missing from a film image. What you have is the visual in a box and helmets fuck badly with the proportioning of informational space within this box. Heroes don't have wide faces. Heroes don't have small features. They have large expressive features that fill their often-narrow faces. They are full of information.

Some hats do and some hats don't. Top hats do, Sherlock Holmes rarely wears one on film. Even in old films he's usually taking it off. Cowboy hats don't. probably cowboy hats are ok because they are a *lateral line*, they go *across the screen* and make the screen feel wider, not more dense. A top hat goes up and down and on a film screen thats awkward as fuck.

Neither surround the face and make it look bigger, Sherlock will NEVER wear his deerstalker with the flaps down. Even on the moors when it’s probably cold as fuck and he is literally stalking something he will keep his flaps tied. Marge from Fargo can have her face-surrounding hat, it makes her look plumper and more heavy and that *tells the story* of Marge and is accounted for in that stories structure.



- Over Signalling.
- Taking damage.
- Grouping up when in area-danger.
- Being highly visible.
- Partial armour use.
- Holding a position of dynamic tension.
- Oversized weapons.

Maybe this is another thing like dungeon traps, a signal inverted or somehow turned inside out to make is useful in a fiction about a thing, to make it a useful piece of mental architecture, a transmissible idea, rather than a piece of the real world.

The Isogyre

(It's more fiction.)

Someone smashes in the back of my skull, I see my brains hit the water before I do. Sink into it. Dark for a while. Fish eat my eyes, then nips of skin. Once they’re inside it goes quickly. Six months or so till the last rags of flesh are gone and then I sit up.

The Possessing Verse

 Here's a thing I wrote. Its just fictiona and its a bit long so its under a thing.

A World To Watch The End Of Time

Start Trek: Coelacanth
SE01E15

EXT. THE LABYRINTH OF NIGHT
The USS Coelacanth drifts the hypnotic swirls of the Labyrinth Nebulae.

VOICE OVER: SPACE CAPTAIN JENNY HAMMER
These, are the voyages of the Star Ship Coelacanth. Our mission: to patrol the Labyrinth of night, to de-crypt strange worlds and doomed civilizations, to boldly go from whence none have returned.

The Coelacanth glimmers like a bruised pearl as swoops through the enfolding tendrils of Summerdust, Tochzal, Ochaar and Adat.

VOICE OVER: SPACE CAPTAIN JENNY HAMMER (CONT’D)
Captain’s log, star date 03072014. Whilst seeking rumours of a Star-Grool, the Coelacanth has clipped the radio emission shell of an unknown civilization.

CUT TO:

BRIDGE OF THE COELACANTH
Space Captain Jenny Hammer leans forward in her command chair, her body curled into a glyph of suppressed action.


SPACE CAPTAIN JENNY HAMMER
Coils. Alive?


Manu Coils, Science Officer, scans the para-translation of the emission shells unfolding tableaux, his eyes flicker madly and his fingers skitter through his consoles shadow field as he smiles.


MANU COILS
Ngh accountingcultureflux, past time, beyond, decay decay translanalysis blue and falling.


SPACE CAPTAIN JENNY HAMMER
Coils!


BOOMER DOGS
(All of these worlds are dead)


MANU COILS
Captain. Rapid analysis of this cultures transmission forms as we move deeper into the shell of its thought, strongly suggest a world moving rapidly towards either death or singularity. We burrow through an ethereal past towards a core of dead tomorrrows. I recommend we resume out search for the Grool.


SPACE CAPTAIN JENNY HAMMER
We’ll see about that Coils. Boomer, how long?


BOOMER DOGS
The Coelacanth’s making good speed Captain. The nebulae here is mainly Sessurea and Ochaar. Minimal resistance to the ships hull penetrating this space, scanners are operating near maximum. Should be any second now.
The voice of the ships computor Serenity Kong, sounds over the intercom.


SERENITY KONG
Excession. Strange World emerging.


Space Captain Jenny Hammer leans forward, her eyes search the folds of the Nebulae. Silver semi-transparent Sessura and blue-black Ochaar.


SPACE CAPTAIN JENNY HAMMER
There. Look.


A Strange World burns in the deepness of space, like something between an honeycomb, the folds of a brain and a heat exchange, but with a strange ab-symetrical beauty, and on a planetary scale.


MANU COILS
Intriguing.


JADE CONDITION
It’s like some impossible sculpture..


SPACE CAPTAIN JENNY HAMMER
Only nothing is impossible Lieutenant.


MANU COILS
Scans confirm Captain, this is a world, its fundamental makeup matches that for a planet of this type. And its total mass is correct.


JADE CONDITION
It’s been hollowed out..


MANU COILS
Simply transformed.


SPACE CAPTAIN JENNY HAMMER
But into what? And why? Boomer, can the Coelacanth get inside that thing?


BOOMER DOGS
Negative captain the..
Boomer suddenly notices, from the corner of his eye, the omni-angled form of an Alien Ghost, invisible to all except him.


SPACE CAPTAIN JENNY HAMMER
Boomer?


BOOMER DOGS
Sorry captain. They outer apertures might be big enough, but the interior is fractal, its like that all the way to the core. Scans come back scrambled. Its a kind of three-dimensional maze.


SPACE CAPTAIN JENNY HAMMER
Could you get us through in the Lemniscate?


BOOMER DOGS
I..


Boomer locks eyes with the Alien Ghost. Shadows unfurl like petals from its undulating limbs.


BOOMER DOGS (CONT’D)
Not me captain. It would take a genius.


SPACE CAPTAIN JENNY HAMMER
Or a madman. Coils, can you do it?
Manu Coils stares enraptured into the pixel-dot matrix arising from his consoles shadow field.


MANU COILS
The symmetry. Yes.


SPACE CAPTAIN JENNY HAMMER
Meet me in the shuttle bay. Lieutenant Condition, order the Lemniscate prepared for launch. You have the con till I return.


JADE CONDITION
Captain, Star Fleet regulations discourage a captain leaving the ship during..


SPACE CAPTAIN JENNY HAMMER
Fuck that. Don’t break my ship while I’m out Condition.


JADE CONDITION
Yes captain.


CUT TO:


INT. SICK BAY
Doctor Pug Tyler carefully assesses a hideous coagulated mass. Watching him is Quinn “Fear Itself” Books.


DOCTOR PUG TYLER
Perfect. Would you recommend a red wine, or white?


QUINN “FEAR ITSELF” BOOKS
I think feasting on the baked remains of an alien super-tumour suggests wasting good wine on you might be a mistake.


DOCTOR PUG TYLER
Spirits then.


Doctor Pug Tyler dashes back a tumbler of alien gin.


DOCTOR PUG TYLER (CONT’D)
You sadden me Quinn. This lozenge of corruption threatened the existence of an inter-stellar megafauna. Now, removed, by me, baked and anointed in sauce, it shall provide a tasty meal. From death I bring forth life.


QUINN “FEAR ITSELF” BOOKS
Life is more than a procession of nightmarish risk Doctor.


DOCTOR PUG TYLER
Is it?


Doctor Pug Tyler pours himself a strong measure of alien gin and begins to tuck a handkerchief into his collar.


DOCTOR PUG TYLER (CONT’D)
Any life not close to death seems death to me.


Tyler starts to carve the alien tumour.


QUINN “FEAR ITSELF” BOOKS
I think risk taken in some cause might be a finer spice.


Tyler pauses with the gobbet of cooked alien flesh on the end of his fork.


DOCTOR PUG TYLER
Ah, but they are few, and who has time to wait?


Enter Space Captain Jenny Hammer.


SPACE CAPTAIN JENNY HAMMER
Doctor. A word. Books.

Biter

Ground comes at me now. Try to fall right, on all four held out. Again, long/not long in mid-air. Always I think the ground holds back, waiting for me, thinking ‘this time Biter this time I smash you good’ even it pulls back some like a fist. Then hit. Kicks my breath out through my teeth.

Dusty down here. Bit myself. Go black a second. Noises.

Up.

Up Biter. Up. Up.

Sword!

Kill it kill it dead man swinging for me with his face gone. Glass shell, dirty brown and sword black. Go down. Block. Forward. Push, fast! Push!

Hit dead man. Faster, more weight. Put shoulder into him and dead feet slid on dusty ground. He goes down, me on top. Dead mans shell has an eye. Eye with lines or sliced in parts. Dead man strong like dead and still has his sword, arm wide. Grab!

I get his arm. Put feet on his chest. Pull pull pull pull pull.

So get that off, new blade. Smash cut the neck bone, kick off the head. Bones and body and skull all going still. Trying to get back in a gang and kill. Look up. What’s where?

Wall of dead men fighting slow. Some shelled in glass with the sliced eye, wheel-spoke eye, right on their shell. Glass has a skin of dust now tattooed with marks of fingers, bone. Rest shelled in steel and on the shell a steel river locked in a knot.

Left. Three river-knots climb a head-high stone face to pull down the glass eye standing on the top.

Right. Looks like tides of steel and glass, storming, or like sea fighting wind. Not that way.

Back. Clot of tangled fighters. Spears and dust through each other and stuck like a puzzle. Grating. Can’t pull apart.

Ahead. More knights of glass, five now, slow-stepping through the dust to kill me never knowing what a thing I am, only live, and shaped like them but not, and here. Same reason as always.

Faces and stone bodies are the floor. Like a food pile, but stone. Quite giants or sleeping gods. Floor is arms and legs and limb-cracks. Eyes and mouths. Dust fills every gap. White dust. Flowing and hissing, the dark parts where shadows should be now white. The stone dark against the hissing dust, moving as it will.

Sniff.

Bone meal.

The fighting men ground down. One day they will all be dust and the dust will be at war in the spaces where the statues meet.

Sooner now. Smash these five in, thick plates that bend the sight of bones underneath.

Som? Can’t see her. Go!

One closer than the rest. Two steps fast. Block. Hilt in both hands. Step in and down onto arm holding blade. Smash. Done. Now more come. Step round and push one-hand-man into rest on left. Spin. Come at two on right.

Too slow. Glass blade at me now. Back. Back Biter back back back. Sword is curved like an old moon. Say goodbye arm Biter.

Hurts. I use my real voice. Born voice. Make ClanFamily sound to let them know I need help. Fills this dark. Loudest thing here for a long time. Maybe dead men screamed before they died or friends screamed seeing them get back up knowing now this place is forever for them.

No-one to hear. No ClanFamily down here.

Arm still on. Cut made bacon of me but thick bones on Biter. Man was trained to fight men, not me.

Up Biter. Fucking fuck. Five still. Two up and coming, three getting up. One with one hand. Fucking dead man weak meat fucks. You kill? You kill this? Dead meatless glass men no. No no no no no. Go Biter. Hit! Go!

Left arm dead. Jump! Hit man fast. Strike, bash blade down. Teeth in dead neck. We both go down. Grrrr hard now Biter. Bite! Crunch neck. Rip (tastes bad). Head off but his dead arms still going. Lift body. Grab, swing! I knock the other down. On him. On top. Punching his dead face. Again! Again again again!. Face breaks. Dead man teeth stuck in my hand skin now. Grab arm and bite! Rrrr snap. Sword arm is mine now.

Three left. Charge. Duck low. Forward fast. Put sword hard through on the gap where leg meets hip. Crunch it hard through the hip-bone. Leg! Got leg.

Next.

The City of the Yellow Eye

Roll up roll up oh you People of the City of the Yellow Eye! A second sun dawns for light indeed I bring! Moons for the blind and blade sharpness for the dull of eye!

The crowd that fills the market is a field

Of flowers, burning like flame driven by wind.

Each silk is tuned to brightness, yellow-gold

Like crowns of summer kings. Oriflamme. Blood

Of a disease that burns in the veins,

Anti-arterial blue, fading to

The storm-dark grey of piled-up pregnant crowds.

The slowly-present yellow-green of spring.

The colour wealth of hoarded insect-shells,

Or painters dreams examined in the night.

I, Hark Addui, optical energiser and expert in the jellied orb! Late of Strongoneisis, Demi-Kaz and Pluvial Town, soon for Smiling Lalieth and Shining Idnadir! But now! For one week only! I place my wisdom in your wallet! My thoughts in your receipt!

Colour-block knaves of symmetrical farms

Are bound to wear one pigment in one shade

Blinding primary like young people’s art.

The peasant families make neat crayon blocks,

Bright young ones straining at their parents hands

Reaching for the city kids that run past

Free, semi-naked, waving monster flags.

Parents holding scented posies, scowling

In resentment of the city smell, ox

And man, bullocks, urine and organ flies

Or the acrid scent of Alkali Men

Moving through the crowd in ones and two’s,

Free momentarily from their endless

Employment clearing the warrens of salt

That re-grow in the twilight hours.

Can’t read my sign? Then come on in! Eyes diagnosed for free! Whatever your irritant my balms shall soothe! Wherever your focus be I can find and shall correct!

The rich

Wear single colours still, veined and un-picked

Waving around their heads and necks like flames,

Pigments each like individual seas

Shifting tidally. Some Fragmenting Men

Of Collapsium are here, their gazes

Are not sought, and their wisdom, though correct

Is rarely loved cold, perceptive, too cold

To earn friends.

Can’t see my cart? Then come towards my voice! I stand upon the steps! Can’t find your feet? Then crawl!

On stages, caravans and

Trucks and big-wheeled carts the merchants stand

In robes coloured like clots of awful blood

Or oozing mucus, many holding parrots,

Watchful shoulder-mounted guards against

The Birds of Crime, and in the crowd are blots.

Smooth ovals of black silk from which eyes gaze,

The pupils of city nobility,

Wives of the Yellow Eye, their husbands masked

Similarly in the faces of state.

The black visards are held in place by pearls

Gripped between the teeth. Gags. Humility,

Or its seeming, and a shell of silence

Washed in street-rivers by currents of gold.

Can’t find the street? Then fly! All welcome, arial or plodding so… (and what is this?)

The crowd parts and frays

The smiling faces of

The people of the Cit-

-ty of the Yellow Eye

Frown now, and turn away

Avoiding the strange sight,

The limping popinjay

With dislocated jaw,

A hand where only one

Finger remains, and thumb.

Pale cloak, scabbarded sword

And tied around his head,

A yellow kite

In flight.