Toronto Poetry Slam

The Jester's Game
by David Tripp sunday, july 5, 2011

Once the jester pretended to be an old captian of a ship returned to his wife of some years. At which point he proceeded to ravish her, and her being the misser of affection ravished even worse . Revealed before the king scene.

There is something to a counter action. To take up the blade rather then to stand and let it fall into you. That good men are creatures of survival more oft than passive, before being struck down. The greatest worriors can be men of conscience, having a capacity for violence does not negate the better parts.

I've faced down monsters, mythical creatures with unkanny resemblance to demons, but never have I met souls with an evil so great as the one I had to muster against my greatest compatriot. Once knowing that evil I took it upon myself as a curse I could never remove.

To raise swords against another justified in so or not... We do not bend before the win, nor do we crumble from our shape when struck. We take it upon ourselves to exist and to a warrier, we know the reapers brinksmenship. The cliff edge we fall off as the abyss absorbs entangles and then releases our fallen bodies.

I shall wield this sword against all who apose and the place I go is not the field of battle, but to an elsewhere of which I am barely lached onto the coporeal. As I ascend or descend I will drag my apponent with me and while I have the homefield advantage in our transcendancy they will be lost.
new idea.
Of course its so obvious.
Prologue

Jester takes co ntrol on page 100 does everyone in. Knights and dragons type story.

Yes you can be my knight but first you must defeat your opponent, the walrus!
what? this was all about a salsa recipe?"
"the king likes salsa"
I heard the jester once killed a pack of highwaymen because they claimed to work for him. Not that he minded any blame but he made a point of impulsiveness on this one. He disguised himself a traveler with some blatent appearence of opulence the highwaymen were drawn in. The movements of his cloths would hint to you the riythm with which this man battles shifting patters of black red and white, i'm not sure which of his cloths hed have been wearing that day.
His septor to their sabor the game was as surreal as one would imagine in any rendition. The one that makes the most since to me is that he knew which of them were the archers and had them taken out leaving some sort of sword battle. The septer squarely through their eye and used to deflect their sabers.

the significance of having no choice in your own creation is significant. Your parents just assumed you'de want to be alive.

The plot is, the knight tells the story ends up working for the jester once the jester is king. Then hes used by jester as spot clean example. While jester kills everyone. an d at the end wont understand why knight then refuses to be used in this manor.

Its complicated how the kings were played against one another but the jester is the only remaining power center and usurped supremety. His banishment from each constabulary castle,

I'm considering silk. I gotta research jestre and break through stariotypes and get closer to my character goal.

Okay, the joker sends the wanna be knight on quests specific for each kings needs. They want proven loyalty and ability but only the jester knows wich quest per king.
Quest
1 secure a dragon the other king is fond of
2kill one of the kings advisors which turns out to be a conspiring of the jester for the only one who would have known of the ancient secrets.
3one king acts against another
4the kings are all in a state of war and the jester sends you to interfere.

and there I held him in focus. His centered his glare on some arbitrary point in space. Little was different but the room became replete with some fowl energy. Up till now I'd been glad to put him as just an aid, I'd been able to use his information to ingratiate with the two kings. Return to a bar tender to brag and ask advice... no. I could feel it the purportions of his character were widely out of shape and nothing seemed to fit together about him.

Perhaps he was a vessel of some hurtful memory he retained within his inner depths. You didnt have to look far in these lands for unnaturally accursed upbringings. The jester rose to prominence on these very streets. They don't expose him in comon language as a master of various gangs and the like. You'd expect the leadership of a gang to be central and that the most important member would at least be inside the gang. But the jester tends to act more as a cartel, a distant and seperate organization which provides required survices or acts to provide items.

"in order to convince the next king."
"wait, but I thought it was to king ---- favour. Why would we present ourselves to a different majesty."
"I'm glad your on your way to nighthood with this king however wouldn't it be better to double your odds by having two powerful men who employ you."

"Jester I do not know that I'll be needing you further, cirtianly you have rendered me into a state of indebtedness. I could not have completed his majesties tasks without ..."
"his what. Around me you best... well you wouldn't... We are in search of a job and employment why would you leave them in high esteems."
"Why are we to meet in this estuary?"
"because I haven't accustomed you to death well enough."
"Death... whats with you and such dark topic selection."
"I live in darkness that I may know the light. We are building a fable here knight. Long have I searched in arcane texts to read of old songs, and time fully distant places such as this.
"how is here and now out of place to time?"
"this place here is slightly out of the city correct?"
" and down the large hillside."
"Then correct would be wrong. this is the original settlement." And as he said this he rose his finger in a slow moving extention and as I looked beyond him there was nothing but a crypts and walls
"This would be the city, barried under a hundred feet of rock?"
"yes, and you never found me amusing. What hilarity that if I were the only one to find that idea within reason, that we would all be barried under rock. That our bones would apear within the stone almost as scrawling upon tablets when removed.
"Were going under rock eigh? Nah I shant believe you."
"Well you and I are. The second king will never accept you. There must be an astonishment where his advisors are drawn to you."
"in a distant mountian pass there is an amulet. It is a settlement somehow related to the burried city."

at this he through his septer against the wall. And he had seemingly done it so deliberately I half expected the wall to open up. He remained moving after it had been flung from his hand raising and lowering his forarms and shaking to seem in anger. Then I thought I heard a sound of sadness done in an odd primate fashion. It was quiet but perhaps he is holding back sobs, at least right now. It registered nearly inaudable as if it could have been multiplied into a louder sound.

He then stooped and retrieved his walking stick. "We will event upon information from within this city."
"but haven't you spoken enough about your phantasy metropolis. I've yet to believe your assertations as to how any of this could be possible."

"we will venture further into this building and within it we may uncover a passage because part of the city has been excavated, but the king well... had the team that had done so killed. He was very fearing of ancient ideas. Held in a contemporary man who knows what powerful secrets could be unearthed from spots which interred our forbearing ancestors."

"which king."
"Both of them hate people like me, either could have easily killed them."
I grimaced. "there you go again putting yourself to me as a scholar."
I shouldnt have said it because at this point he entered into a rage and his face seemed ready to squeeze tears from itself or to simply have eaten something sour. It was hard to make out his physical displays of emotion, happy face sad face all were some overexagerated ruse with him. One which i pittied him for as it was always convincing to people how should I think this... more easily fooled.
"ah ha the great knight was singular in formulating his plans for success in our midevil career world. Where did the singularity of your epiphany for pleasing your first sire occure to you. Getting drunk in various bars, from one admirer you let easily slip into your bed. Hmmm did she act as a wife while meerly some whore. Oh go out and succeed. Be a shining example to a family and take with you all the power and bring it with you as you return to her. She's tricked you hasn't she make you think its best to indulge fruitfully with a women who upon any examination would easily enter into disrepute becomes some angel you associate strongly with work performance and task completion."

"Enough, your right it was you. Oh jester how you helped me lets bring it up at every possible moment and deliver thanks. I mean if your going to invent situations and people to irritate me. You know I'm to busy with sword training and the like. Its constant work to keep ahead of the other noble knight competition. No girls will come later."
"girls will come later... Now surely you jest."
"behind the rock eigh?"

Commencment

It was an evening where night envoloped quicker. Within the centerfold of the forest there was an open field reached by paths. And there did settle a camp of bruteforce highwaymen. Tarps, paperish matts held up by some bonework of construction. A smattering of them spread across the grass.

Pan right a set of feet, pan up a man in slow over exchotic movements making large leaping tip tow steps. The leggings this man wore were simular to his choice of socks... Well they could be taken as shoes but they seemed more like thick socks with an unusual seem stitched in at the tip.

This could have been no one else indeed the jester approaches. Unbenounced to the unfortunate men who have crossed this jackle. Waving a crude yet impressive scepter in his hand he held the jewal portion covered. The rest could have been metal or a bit of solid wood from a yew tree. He held the item high and brought it to bear upon the heads of a men he encroached behind. Repeated swings hit upon the same area alerted the other two men to his presence and he quickly swung the scepter between him and an aproaching sabre.

" I hear you work for the fool, should I be he, then I've taken good retribution. For no such agreement as to your being my".. The other man unengaged came closer and jester swiftly and avidly flipped his long scepter between the two swords and moved backwards. "subordinates."
*
I'm a knight. Well, I will be, my family is noble enough and there are three kings I could work for, if not I'll be left searching for fortune in island city. My swordsmenship has spoken for me many times. But in our lands the only thing employers want to know is, "what quest have you survived, what great ladies did you bring to bed and most importantly have you had any encounters with the jester. I hear he came up much as I did, street crews of swordsmen, its the best way to counter bowmen have obversver knightsmen.

While its true hes banished from all four cities the footmen have no interest in aprehending the jester, for his men are always nearby and... they say he has more in the crowd then the king has in their favour. The houses come alive and barried swords are quickly drawn for men such as this. No, triflement is a foolish endevour with the jester.

Its nearly one of the first things they ask, the kings men are always bringing it up and a job interview is as good a time as any. 'Do you know who works for him, have you heard of his next move'.

"we'll have him put to death you know."
"Sir if we could really just talk about me working for the king." I suggested. He didnt seem to be listening and went off again about it.

" Oh yes" umm 'please stop' I would think. As he entered a stare offward into space of melancholy and madness.
"put to death, the king has said." Many times the king has said this i'm sure i've heard of it. The king stops all games or activities they would be engaged in and suddenly starts shouting, as if terror would be held in ones voice he speaks well irrigular of normal.

"They say he is good with the ladies! ah how we shell make the example of this man. Jokes they tell us hes good at, well his travels and renound will show everyone ones and for all..." This is of course the job interviewer not the king, but hes so drilled it into them i can't interrupt.
"He will die by the very humour with which he draws such blasphomy. He speaks of regiside, in ear shot of our subjects?:!? well the king shell do well harm upon this treason speaker."

This happened not once but thrice. In each of the two kingdoms on the mainland local. The jester has always been a tail that took the place of my valuable job interviews.

Picture a jester, no wait forget that. Forget everything you knew about clownery, comedy men and men of melodic jokery. Imagine in stead a man of darkness with shadows drawn definably deep over his eyes from his forhead as acount of being slumped over in posture. Across any chair he sits undecidedly jagged jurked far into his left or right. No this is not a comfortable character that stimulates safely and light heartedly. Perhaps the emotion which is the most common reaction would be fear. His nature is that of intensity he has much energy and would prefer oft to be in sadness then in jovial laughter. It baffles the mind that one would join into a cultural phenomina of jesting (a good and at times lucrative career I myself may have considered) but to appear expectant that a joke will be taken as a serious notion, with all that respect would entail.

Yes indeed I shant fault him for being slightly seperate from that lot(though wanting no other title) the jesters clothing is not specific to the period in seems, well frankly I prefer the fashion of this mans attire. It does not hold well to be placed in the same lot as other costumes I've seen fashion trend waltzing about. This seems intriciately designed and more akin to a gothic imitation of other jesters, nearly pitch black still having the hat with three sections falling to seperate sides. However this may suprise you to hear from me, but I honestly take this man seriously and have no wish to do otherwise.

This is a man born out of time. History remembers nothing of figures such as this, so i'm not suprised you wouldn't believe easily this tale. What is a fool. Dimensions disturbed, quiet demeanors broken and feelings stird intermittantly rageful or sorrow and missery departed into, indeed there was a deviding line between this man and the normality of order you would naturally cling to. If there was danger for our dragon slayer it would be best understood in his unnatural riddles and formulated mock decrees. History be damned for forgetting, it could never understand such a man.

They say women make love to him equally in every season, not just spring. "why don't they take an arrow to the basterd."

The jester remained in the shadows swinging from side to side every few momments and with a sceptors in his grasp. He knew well where the shadows were as he would bring his eye out of them singularly then flashing again the sceptor.

If I were he perhaps I could tell you what the item was, but if the kings had any jelousy for him it would have been exemplified with this...

"This, this is my sword of rule, larger then the pen." well, it really only came alive to his mannourisms kreeping into me with glares and sharly shaped mouthing.

Suddenly I remembered there was a time. Oh yes there was a time when there was not a single act of voilence that wasn't some aspect to his major design. Banishment, you think the king took this man lightly, you think he was some creature of amusement for them like youve heard of other jokers, why. This man was a relic of satin his humourisms were soul destroying as any incantations.

"What is your career now."
"Oh, wouldn't you like to grasp what I keep in the rafters of my hay loft head."
"i hear it is as a blacksmith with your mind. would foolery be your work."
"Hmm. seems you've broken with careful cordiality and cut right down to the where the meet hits the bone. I'll set sail for the fall off from earth before then i give you more then a hint. There is something that is to come wich I think you'll find much inspiring. There are too many kings in our realm there can be only one."
"Which of the two would you choose"

the jester didnt think much of my time because he sat there without speaking for many minutes. How that did enrage me, something had been building inside of me with his tone etching insanity upon my ears.

" There are as you know two, well they all are well painted portraits in being king over a fourth of this land. An uneven piece to a pie with three vieing powers, hmm what would you expect?"
"that they'd peacefully split the forth and enjoy their wealth and success. I assume you mean Island city. The gods saw fit to place a mote around a patch of land"
"And two cities upon either side encapturing it. An economic interplaying system is then formed and... cattle, crops women all thrown back and forth until the king hears from their advisors... by god there are other places flouting your rule."
"But no one rules island city its governed by the malitia, and townsmen. Are you telling me the kings will be provoked into war?"
"Game."
I'd tell you the rest, but it so bothers me that I didn't act against this deamon. Constabulatory of cruelty.

*

I began work on my quest the next day. Now, this may suprise you but the jester never actually told me what it is I had to do. Rather he found it natural to do our first bit together by not doing it at all and instead diverge in the direction of his insanity. How insane you may ask? Well he left me with a letter, here i'll open it now. That I should tolerate playing around when I should be looking to please a majesty into my knighthood.

The letter was on poka dot paper folded into some sort of shape i find difficault to describe. Unfolding it without tering the antiquated blank paper he was using. The edges of the page were all singed off with great care as to make a strait edge. The letter was as fallows.

" Greetings Traveller
I was long in search of someone to effect the world with my ideas. Here I was sitting as some sort of gossip queen collecting meaningless points of dribble about people who matter not. Yourself could have been a matter not as well. But you've proven your manner of excellence by finding the greatest aid one could beseach assistance from.

Very well young knight. I will be your soul reason of success, that I will be doing for you. I will disenchant you right here of your own part in your own life in your own quests. Until you employment from the king you are a subbordinate to me.

ps. your quest involves a bar fight with some guy i hate

Hmm. The post script sais this little adventure is for him not me. A subbordinate? As if I were a younger clown... No some day i'll shake since into that basterd. But if I have little to pay him with maybe it is reasonable that I perform his task. Why would he call me a traveler? Because I care not of which city i'm gainfully employed to my highest potential. I was always a good knight in the making, even as I was young my reflexs at swordsmenship simply guided the weapons for me. By four I could wield anything, be it a mace a club a sword I was the best at it. Running down the field nocking targets to the ground.

Why would I turn to a fool for my needs? Because even back then I knew who he was. The street bullies rallied around him as a young seven year old. Mind you in my time street kids were common as the kings showed little judgement in poverty.

By the time we were teenagers the world had only become more inamured with the jesture. He had risen to some sort of high gang status coming and going as he pleased from within various crime groups young and old. For me to describe what forms of danger one must be aversed in to shield themselves from easily collected enemies. Why even to become known to some of these men and youth was to inisght danger against ones self.

If only one of the kings had learned to shape the world as him. To move the minds of their subjects rather have them all so directed. I heard there was not a tale of love that didnt involve some disruption of the jesters design. Fall in love, hardly, for your future wife they would meet muscular suiters and hear poetic works the jester had written for her. Mind you poems and the like are still cool and new during the time of which i speak.

Imagine that, the devine it must take to know what poem would unlock which heart and then smite the drive of men towards cupids mark. Hundreds of tales I swear, hundreds as terrible as Jobe and gods seal with satin against him.

The jester looked at me and errupted. "smitten with the caged bird, because it sings to fly."
" That broke 5 mens hearts when their loves were brought to me. They fell in love with men who resemble to a wig i would then wear to well, make love to their future wives. We entwined in places their suiters were brought. Then I had them held down and shamed, dressed in pink shall we say." Not that I entirely took with his version of events now nore ever.

"She made the decision to neglect my affections but I was as quite a biforcate and when I looked at her I longed to suggest that this would be her decision as my lifes mind state. For as I crossed into myself I could have been a different man for her love."
"because with out a girl friend you were a different one. Prevelantly taken as outside of groups. (mind you outside of groups was not a group yet)"
"thanks for the update on how that looks. But of course not and why wouldst that pick a fight with me." The jester didnt smirk upon this discourse. Mind you I shouldn't have said anything hes a major charmer, as these days it all seems so new to have one man mock the rest at expense of his safety.
"Expense of your safety." I anounced
"Whats that"
"oh why I bother with you is that you've endangered yourself for a joke. Maybe if you truly loved a women you wouldn't gamble ones life so friviliously.

*
Page 100

The king had lost some of his trust in me as I was not sent out to retrieve the jester once his wherabouts had become known. There was something frosty in the air but the king seemed significantly warmed by the idea of achieving some measure of his designs against this esteemed street hooligan.
So when I saw this man I'd come to respect dragged into the royal cort I nearly toppled over. He had been badly beaten and bruises grew around his eye.
The king bellowed aloud so that the chamber echoed and resonated with his voice. "So this is the man of foolery I've yet to become aquanted with. Tell me mr. mockery if your skills of human foible mincing and mimeckry of greatness were worthy of adulation that you couldn't simply join in on my party. I tire easily of my inferiors and of how they fail to draw any emotion from my lighter more jubilent side." 'Should that even exist' I thought. The jesters most prized possession was taken to King Darius and he ripped it from the hand of one of his subjects. "Dress him in the bafoon make up."
The jester seemed to take the king very seriously for his eyes oggled some pattern of tile on the floor and I began to notice an intensity arise from my friend. He slowly looked up and Darius exchanged some communication I didn't much understand. It is not for a knight to know the ways of a king just as the jester should not have integrity but there he stood held up helpless by the kings gaurds, the king and the jesters soul staring through windows at one another. Emotion began to overtake me as it dawned on me the gravity of what could happen next. It took all my strength to not reveal myself as an ally of the jester.

There were 9 knights in the room 2 on each wall 3 gaurding the king and two without sword drawn holding the jester in place and of course many squires in the rest of the castle. Had they been ordinary men with standard or substandard weaponry I could fowl the room with their corpses. As each minute passed I felt I could take more of them one, then two or three but shifting glances from breastplate to breastplate I imagine puncturing and fending them off would exhaust me before I could finish with them.

"Kill him." Spoke the king bearing his teeth viciously.
My heart lept and I pulled my sword without thinking. No one noticed as I was off in the corner of the room, I had slowly stepped back unknowingly. Part of me was simply walking away from the whole event. I was closer to the king and had three of his knights not been standing there I could have held the king hostage.

"Stop this!" I shouted. I was running towards my friend but he was still so far away but as I got closer I realized I had exposed myself for nothing. The two knights holding the jester were frozen solid as the statues adorning the castle. This as tears began falling from their faces in streams. Their weapons undrawn and their grip on his arms loosening.

And that brought to mind a great many things and I felt a time to upon them. When the jester was a street thuging once they started to beet him, but they beet him to hard, they should have beet him the other way. You know the one where you survive and what not. So he lay there crippled, undaided because those were the kings orders. Back then the kings had a great deal more influence over his subjects and by that I mean solly the joker. It was as if it were law to hurt him with words and to forge his mind as a hot sun to an outcast on a dessert island.

But the jester was strong and he survived that atrocious assault unaided. Now looking at the two knights holding him I wonder if that story crossed their minds as well. How could a person bring so much upon themselves.

Now you would ask, why didnt those two loyal knights intercede on the kings behalf. Better to ask why wouldn't I. I later found out the jester had played each of these men into their positions as well, not in the intimate nature me and the jester befriended eachother with but as it would have it none of the knights had

Perhaps I could have gone along with it. Know that some other force would come along and a faction could replace the jester as ruler and I could step in and have him merely banished and ejected. Again, no. There was a series of abilities which I could only account to as dorment until now. Suddenly he could stretch economies and present to other deep knowhow with buisness. That is before he brought them down and under.

One thing about the three cities is that they are not like in other lands. There are merchants a plenty and many fullfilled stores with trinkets and spices all highly payed for. And our citizens have the money to buy.

He started by having a bank robbed then bailing it out. Which he then used to hold select men hostage to thier wallet, needing loans or account assurances. His will would extend with tricks such as this and he begain to make the cities in his image.

Don't get rid of them.
"ive had about enough of this. I'm through with you, I'm through with being your knight and I am definately through with your utopia!"
"You take that back"
"hardly."

theres too many intricasies to our life that normal could be natural.