Shang-Te (Old sign: Sagitarius) How will you do better than your forebears? That pile of cash, those gold bars, the diamond encrusted grills! Gold toilet bowls and rolled golden oats! No one can tempt you to sell yourself but yourself! Don’t look away from the suffering of others! You need not get ye to the soup kitchen post haste but be aware!
Gih-Na-Sha (Old sign: Capricorn) Did you see that last play! Pure art! They will call it a “video game move.” But the game is just a trompe l’oeil. The flesh and bone of the haunches. The chunks of turf in the face. Dance, dance! Look for wisdom in the dance!
Hahp-E (Old sign: Aquarius) All that snow pack! The potential of their meltdown to fill our reservoirs! Slurp it up, oh, daughters of the mountain! May not one drop fill your aquifer! Desert wetlands and grassy tundras. Oh how we justify our thirst!
Hehk-Eht (Old sign: Pisces) Nice to look ahead to the melting and naked exuberance of spring! But it will do you no good for now! Now your 4×4 is stuck in an icehole. Seven miles through the snow to home. You know you will survive if you start walking now. You may live out the night in your vehicle. Yet you worry about bandits snaking your kill.
Kah-Le (Old sign: Aries) Prologue Part 2 The lady binds the wound on the nape with the green sash and sends you on your way with a fresh horse and a warning. Will that one wound be enough to curb your willful heart? How many more cuts will you need before you are humble once again? Your body and status has made you arrogant and now is no time to be complacent! The wind chills your bones on the way back to your lord’s keep. Don’t you know that is her own icy breath? The stones are her bones and the earth is her flesh. Camelot is dark on your arrival this Christmas! Mourning shrouds billow from the windows and white smoke curls and unfurls into a cloudy bindling sheet. You say a silent prayer to have the courage to confess your shame to the King!
Ah-Naht (Old sign: Taurus) Your lover lays their head in your lap and asks for help with a puzzle. You won’t know the answer but some temporary comfort may shake the answer free from the living rock of their brain. You often wonder if it’s a test. Eventually you agree that it is yourselves testing yourselves.
Eh-Shu (Old sign: Gemini) Who owns that bone in your nose? Who is leading you around through rice paddies and clover knolls? The snake oil vendor is selling spiritual relaxation in the form of liquid mantras. Pound the pavement and shake that heavy head. Snort and contort and make sure your master really cares for you. The charnel ground smolders and mingles with the morning mist.
Tah-Na (Old sign: Cancer) Mosses and lichens and algae rejoice! There are songs that we self-authenticators can only dream of! Conduct your herd of green beasts! Minor falls and major lifts…or the other way around? Concepts beyond our dreaming and imagings make magi of you all! Bring your gifts in chloroforms and chlorophylls! Place the offering at the feet of the Moss Lord and Lichen King and Ombudsman of Algae! Frog mouths and goat hams for all!
Marutuk (Old sign: Leo) Beg that you never analyze the faults of others! Error, error! Eerie and blue! They come and they go and whence you err hence they err! Don’t forget the sun is the origin of the wind!
Kah-Noom (Old sign: Virgo) The creek is dammed up and gravity won’t work today. Not quite opposite day. The straws you draw are all short. Rain falls so hard it rebounds in your face on the way back to the sky. Who can you sue? Don’t you wish there was such a thing as dumb luck?
Tah-Na (Old sign: Cancer) Got to get out! Escape to where? Are the mountains any safer? The forests? The desert? Wandering in the wastes and feeling thin and thirsty! There is an oasis but then what? An ocean? A jagged scree lies at the feet of mountains. Not a scrap of green. A firestorm raged here not two weeks ago and then the rains came, too late, and steam and smoke rise together from the blackened logs. Then you find a perfect circle of green green grass: greener than any green of your life in the grey sooty world. And you curl up there and wait for rebirth.
Ter (Old sign: Scorpio) You are using ammo faster than they can make it. Firing off cannonade after cannonade down into the murderholes! What end are you wishing for? Do you think you will find some peace should you survive a cataclysm? Ah ah! The silence of all the throngs! In your misanthropy you forgot to include yourself!