Argument: Lathy begs on the streets and returns to the Cage where his first battle rages and splutters and falls.We’re getting to the point where despair and elation meet through the appearance of green – that envy, that death, that knightly shadow, and dwarfish stare.
This is about envy which turns despair to elation and elation to action and action to the future of Lathynarn the Knight.
Money had troubled us and for months the tissue between hunger and grumble had been street tricks – we had trained the ponies to catch stray coins with their now magnetised hooves.
“Roll up,
you entertained!
Fling a penny to the pony!
Watch him juggle it round
the horseshoe ground!”
That was me speaking – Lathy was no entertainer.
“How cruel!
(… some men muttered…)
To magnetise
the poor beast’s method of keeping
itself good and useful
to other men!
“And then
to take the coins
it earned itself, hard, for yourself.
Exploitation, nowt more!
Think shame! Think shame…”
Think shame… think shame… some found it cruel – an act of foolishness and wickedness; but why wicked for us to eat? why accept us pounding the wet street in hunger while they save the ponies, save the whales, save donkeys, monkeys, bears and snails – save ‘em all, shame on ‘em all…
We were hungry – that was all.
And so one day, a cold day in that very, very month of May – that day – remember it? – one day we returned to the Cage all hungered and tattered – Lathy a disaster in midget form, his armour scratched and battered, his sword all chipped and mind bricked-up, our bellies bloated from the malnourishment of it all.
And what a sight to see.
Sick Brian and the gang sat gathered at the feet of – No! – Gawain! they hung from the joins in his armour as silver as his hair was gold – as long to finish speaking as the greatest story ever told, Gawain Celebratos sat in the Cage and told the children there his tale.
He began in a ramble blah the knight in green one New Year’s Day blah and ha! beheaded and challenged (Jan rummaged for a ball to be the Green Knight’s head) blah, ha, and pah! to the tasks that then befell him in his battles and fights and womanly slights and ribbons and garlands and___
“Flowers
in golden hair?
Mascara? Eyeliner? Lipstick
and silken underwear?
True wear for knights?”
Lathy had been shaking, the green armour earthquaking its little tremor as he listened to the knight’s boasting of his tale – his indignation had erupted, creating a land of righteousness like a Surtsey.
“Quiet,
do not listen,
pay no attention to that knight
of lying intentions –
ignore his words.
“He lies.
His story lies.
His tale is a much shorter one,
one that sadly denies
heroism.”
Sir Lathynarn chanted his song of the True End of Sir Gawain that New Year’s Day the Green Knight arrived to challenge away.
“Sir Gawain upped and wandered by the walls of the city.
He took his head and hammered a hole out by the gate
and swore at the swans and swung at the guards
who tripped inattentive over his toes on the path.
The snow deep and soaking his new stripèd breeches
the wind throwing wisps of whipped flakes on his hair
Gawain shuddered, he shook, he shouted out hoarsely:
‘Why me, God? Why me? God grant me my wish
to disappear from the day I dropped the axe on his head
and miss out twelve months, I can’t meet him at all
this green knight, this giant, this nameless grunt-headed
machine of a warrior, this waster of men.
God give me a message. May I go now and vanish?’
The dawn was delayed by a draughts-board of cloud
that squared off the sky and asked for a break
from dawning that day. Gawain ducked into a nook
in Camelot’s walls, he welled up and cried
far off from his friends, his favourites, his fans.
Gawain waited for a word from the walls with their crows.
His cheeks frosted with ice, and afraid of the choice
he froze
into the blank city walls
with a length of ice on his nose
ignoring the crows calls
and the castle guards’ blows.”
Lathy bowed to the boys and finished with a flourish:
“He froze
a death that night.
That knightly fraud ran to failure,
and his tears ran to ice
and then he died.”
Gawain had been silent, but now stood up.
“But sir,
I am alive.
Can you deny me standing here?
I have denied you once
before as ‘knight’.
“Midget,
you annoy me
and all my fellow knights are sick
to every torn-out tooth
of your ranting.
“Beat it,
clear off, fuck out
of the story – you are two foot
short of modernity
and relevance.”
Gawain cleared his throat and sang his midget knight, his little man, his failure song:
“A little man, a midget large
in self-belief, a leaf afloat
above the forest floor.
“You dwarfish knight
are not a knight –
you are a little man.
No more.
“Untermensch, you underling,
full of your steam-built
misunderstandings
are bad to the core.
“All ambition, no skill
no requirements to fill
the boots, these armoured boots,
of all those knights,
“who frame the door.
Their particles of lights
are no more than visitors
to your shrunken frame.
“We shine a light,
you reflect a moment,
any gleam like a moon –
damned sister moon –
“to the superior sun.
You little man,
you midget leering
at distant windows,
“you midget peering
poorly into them
for absence of a box
to stand yourself upon…
“A little man, a midget large
in self-belief, a leaf afloat
above the forest floor –
float drift your tiny millimetres
above the forest floor.”
Lathy launched at him with sword and fury, but Gawain stepped aside – my master clattered to the Cage and crumbled on the floor: Sick Brian, Jan and Dean, Bob, Wart and Joe, Edward the Queen, Johnson in mitre, all laughed at the fall.
“Lathy
is a fuckwit,
a failure, a true tit, Lathy
is one big cock-a-wit
and we. hate. him.”
What to do? nothing - Gawain picked us up and threw us out.
Now Lathy should decide what to do with his life – a smile across the face, one taste of fighting fills the smile.
“Come boy,
we have questing,
adventuring and exploring
to do to make my name
(… he turns to the sky, his nose now bleeding…)
So what to do?”
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