a chronicle of the admirable misdemeanors of the monkee emperor part 1

“Allow me to disperse, as I have done in many such establishments in all of England, a tale of much woe and misery, primarily for all save the protagonist, in exchange for ale and a warm bed, my good sir and fine maiden?”

“I see you do not protest, so I must begin my tale.

“There once existed an accidental mongoloid named Sir Timothy. An odd name for a Mongol man, you may say, but he was borne of a saucy young English maiden, widowed wife to a duke of considerable standing and dubious ancestry. He was, therefore, christened by his dying mother some years earlier to be properly announced at all fashionable societal functions as Sir Timothy Monk. The young man, at the tender age of eighteen, was malcontent with his unfortunate fortune and uncalled for sniggers behind his back when he spoke of his honorable family titles and decided to travel into the world and make a name for himself.

In the days of yore, as today, good master barkeep, much of the world beyond our own borders was shaded in mystery. Humans were thought to reside in Britain and animals and evil spirits beyond its comforting borders. It was in this unenlightened world that Sir Timothy of Monk went forth to carve for himself a kingdom, be it by conquest or trickery.

He gathered for himself a party of fourteen young fools, eager as he to look upon the borders of the natural world and sail clean beyond, and set forth on a rickety sailboat he found himself the owner of. It was after some days that the fourteen men ceased their censorious complaining about the food rations on board. One fine day a wholesome fight commenced in which every member of the crew managed to get in at least three well aimed fists to the face of other members, save for the captain who retained his dignity and sought refuge upon the crow’s nest without informing the rest of the crew, although it is secretly believed to this day that he climbed down after the men lay exhausted and half blind with facial puffiness on the fourth day’s end and did his share of walloping and retired innocently to the crow’s nest after the deed was done, the scurvy dog. But I digress from the tale, allow me a sip of this fine brew before I move forward with the story, good barman and maiden.

“Ah yes, much better. I spoke thus of the legendary fight that had erupted on board the S. S. Fortune (for the young lad opted to name the boat after that which he had lost to attain it). The consequences of the fight were many and for generations after the great adventure the descendants of two crewmen who had punched one another would still rather see a punch landed than a friendly word traded, but the primary consequence, if you will excuse my unlearned self making such proclamations, was this: they lost sight of where they headed and the S. S. Fortune drifted along with ne’er a one to pay mind to where she went or how many miles off course she traded upon the jovial sea. The fight ended abruptly when the ship halted none too gently upon a the shore of a strange island filled with trees as large as five men standing atop each other and animals that were clearly not to be seen in jolly England.

(to be continued, perhaps)

loss

My spirit lies broken, the voices in my head have faded.

As I lie here in the darkness and watch the passionless stars, I wonder if I had been better borne into subservience.

A mind with no opportunity to think, no reason to wonder. A mind as enslaved as the body, bound together with chains of gold, dressed for the occasion in a tie.

More than the chains, I resent the tie, the tie that binds. It is a faded fossil of hope lost, yet the fact that I can still recognize it for what it is makes me different from you. I have but a whisper of a memory, a tattered fragment of a dream. Of days spend in idle chatter and filled with an absolute restraint, yet joyful in that these restraints were mine own to choose. No man my master, no man my slave, I was bathed in joy.

It was at moments like this, when I return to this silent bower and no longer can I drown out the voice that tells me what I have become, what I could have been.

But the voice is silent now. Perhaps it is lost forever and if it is so, I have lost myself. I loosen my tie and wait for it to reemerge from the murky depths of my mind. Several moments later, I wonder what I’m doing and what it is I was waiting for when there is work to be done, presentations to be made for the next day and mortgage payments to be met.

I am to be promoted soon. Fantasies are for the weak, I am living reality. I leave my tie on and fall into a slumber that is deep and peaceful as only a spotless mind can achieve.