Playing Cards

Truth Teller to the Queen:
Your diamond fled your ring
The Kingdom left you spineless
And feeling icey cold
Do not send for a King
Send for back-up
Send for back bone
Send for a Joker with heart of Gold.

Your field of clovers does not exist for you to trample across, hunting for your 4 or 5 leaves.
We are meant to take heart in just trusting they are there, that they thrive being untouched, unclaimed.
Just as we should not hunt lady luck, we are also not her prey.
She is not elusive or selective.
She knows the careful difference between wishes and demands.
When we surrender to her every wonder we have to offer, free from wondering what she will offer us, there she is.

She gets easily lost in the shuffle. She reigns only in a world where men still stand up to greet a woman. Any woman.

In this world, she is face down and disappearing underneath the hand of some thundering magician, some bewildering politician.

Lately under crude smoke and electric guitar waves, she waits. She is dealt to early or too late for the man who would have her face down and hidden to keep up the bluff. The head of the round poker table is revealed when he stands up to greet her, surrendering his chips to let her shine without gain.

She leaned against her castle wall. It was one thing she could actually expect to be cold and stiff with no give, no take. A wall could not let her down, but it held her back. And she let the gaze of the sun warm her, the gaze of the Kingdom scorch her. Like a hungry wolf, it wanted the best of her, the worst of her, but nothing in-between. The wall kept her grounded but didn't protect her from the blazing heat. Warmth, felt so good until suddenly it didn't. The relentless sun looked straight through her.

Enraged by feeling invisible, she cast her javelin with all her might, at nothing in particular. The Jester caught it one handed, and laughed. Disarmed, she knew she would only get her spear back if it severed her heart.

Clumsy she fled from her high tower, hauling her pride and dead weight. Without the wall, nothing grounded her. Nothing held her back. She found herself in orbit. She saw what she carried floating alongside her. Pride and dead weight separated into smaller pieces, revealing what they actually were. And there she saw guilt and shame being foolishly utilized as a way to maintain character. She saw her self, with nothing to lean on, nothing to adorn her. Weightless, cosmic and free she saw greatness. She revered that in-between part of her, and it saved.

A wild card.
Peculiar, maybe dangerous.
Initially, praised for her versatility.
Encouraged to be ever more pliable.
She bends and twists and takes a bow.
She's so novel. Her tricks. Her flexibility.
She is anybody anyone would like her to be.
Urgent to be everything within her reach.
As she becomes everything, so she feels like nothing.
A limitless woman and her dark side.
Without reigns she is indulgent, impulsive, slippery.
Effortless and tireless, she stirs the pot to boiling point
and when it's thick enough dumps it on her own head.
Then she is called psycho and everyone looks away.
She has kept silent now she's bloody screaming.
She is on the run and sitting, starting at a wall.
Her performing stage a spectrum that is stretched so thin...
she falls straight through.
Once highly sought after, not a soul is liable for her now.
Once adored, she is now ignored
In that absence, that silence, wild as she is,
she dances to the sound of the crickets,
runs with the howling wind,
and rides the tempest all the way back home.

This story has so many angles, let's start with the most dim and irrelevant thing and tilt, until we catch that elusive gleam.

The ghost of a living material wife. She will haunt a wealthy dead man walking, by stripping him of his riches just before his dying breath. When his thick gold band slides off his cold and slendering finger, he becomes nothing but cigar smoke. Gone traipsing to the other side as if he were naked in front of a crowd. (Kind of like being born.)

Diamonds are born under intense heat and pressure, deep within the womb of Mother Earth. They are carried to the surface by molten rock. Earth yields them to the unsuspecting man and expects him to offer them straight back to her. The waiting woman.

Under intense heat and pressure the diamond that was once snug on a woman's finger turns loose. Spinning around, never upright. Like whichever half of the globe that resides in the night away from the sun as it rotates endlessly. It slides back on and it slides back off. What is bubbling beneath her surface?

She thought she saw a man change. "He's changed, he's changed, he's changed." She thought. His entire facial structure continued to alter from the moment he bent his knee. He was more familiar to her when he was poor, and a stranger. When he smiled at her for the first time, she felt warmth. When he smiled at her now, all she saw was him, baring his teeth.

As she witnessed the change in the man, she couldn't help but notice that every difference wrought upon him happened first within her. Inside that deep molten that had to be a billion years old. Where love and promise were ancient and she knew it never did begin, or end with her. Diamonds are forever, it's the people who change. Till death, or the splitting of Earth's crust, do us part.

They said... "explain yourself."

Then they couldn't listen.

At the end of the day
The Man of The Hour
Could not help but sneak away
And strip himself of royal power
Descending from the highest tower
For his secret sojourn down
He vanished from his coat and crown
Off his fingers went his rings
Pretending not to be a king
The mighty staff is all he'd bring
In through the basement corridor
Past the cellars on damp floors
He sauntered to another world
To bake bread with the peasant girls
The girls were lively, easy, free
The loved him and his mystery
They danced around him, twirled the staff
"He stole this from the King!" they laughed
Alongside bright excited eyes
Spirits and bread dough would rise
The room got hot and full of noise
At the sweet sight of that peasant boy
Heat bounced of their knees and noses
Lovely cheeks burned pink like roses
With dirty faces, but not laying a finger
Their calloused hands had touched his heart
Sweep away his boot prints, he could not linger
Like flour dust he had to part
Up to the highest spire he climbed
To his lady right on time
He leaned his staff on the four post bed
That he shared with a queen to which he was wed
Her skin was pale her eyes were dim
Expressionless she looked at him
Her hands were soft her lips were fresh
Dutifully she touched his flesh
A clever man to get his fill
By many a woman and her own free will
Night came down to make it still
In the morning
Girls were waking
Bread was baking
Time was wasting
Dough was scrubbed from sticky spoons
Servants graced the highest rooms
For the King's breakfast; hot cross buns
He took one bite and burnt his tongue
A small price for such wily fun.

And for him the girls would say:
Kiss me
Trick me
Dig my bones
Feed me
Keep me
Take me home
But this one always got away
And pretty ghosts of white bones lay
Across the desert highway.
Then one fateful stunning night
A girl cast a javelin with all her might
At nothing in particular.
It landed dead square in the heart
Of the man who had down to an art
"The one who got away."
But now his soul and body laid
helpless on the highway.
Along skipped the girl who threw the spea
Just wondering what was over here
In boots and tassles, void of fear
She kissed him
Tricked him
Dug his bones
Fed him
Kept him
Took him home
And up from their dusty highway hells
Rang pretty bones turned wedding bells.

The King, weighed down by a lofty petition,
Hastily called for some thundering magician
Who with gloved hands made white clouds swirl
And shuffled the deck above a wild world.
Til each shining star ruled the clouds to part
So they could gaze down on each curious heart.
The King then petitioned the souls in the land
He said "Come, to each heart I will deal a hand."
Then poor souls wandered with their five little cards
And poor hearts wondered under twinkling starts
Some lovers, in the streets and chapels they danced
While some lovers never dared take that chance
For the bewildering hand of cards they were dealt
Was not quite, or at all really, what they felt.
So they took their impossible cards underground
And secretly traded and shuffled around
Loose cards appeared all over the streets
Torn up and dirty under shuffling feet
Confuse was the village as they met up above
They shouted "without your cards, how do you love?"
While the villagers frantically gathered the cards
The underground hearts gave them up to the stars
Then they marched to the throne where the King wore his crown
Empty handed they flipped him right upside down
As he stood on his head every heart went straight quiet
Every fisticuff hand that was ready to riot
They all noticed the King, and he looked quite the same
While the cards always changed, the stars would remain.
And each sould of their own heart now had free reign.
As the upside down King of Hearts removed his white gloves
With bare hands, and bare hearts, he declared, love is love.