Tarot

And from his urn he dreamed…and he remembered the land burning and the foxes foraging for food among the dead…sifting through unburied corpses… nuzzling into torn dead pockets…sometimes finding a morsel or two… picking up wanton broken swords…transforming them into playthings…flinging them into the air…listening to the clank of rusted metal breaking against rock-strewn turf…dusting human carcasses with shimmering metallic rubble…and the foxes laughed peculiar laughs and haunted the necropolis fields with stony songs.

And from his urn he dreamed…and he saw his children dancing naked…enthralled with the golden coins pouring from his hands…winnowing through his fingers…bouncing from their chests...he heard their joyous shrieks as they played…tossing doubloons into the air…catching them by the fistful…watching as their hair turned pale blond and their bodies to frail white bones lying in repose…golden discs protruding from their eyes…while  the foxes crooned atonal lullabies to the dead babes and suckled each other in sorrow.

And from his urn he dreamed…and he recalled meeting her under the Sign of the Rose…they knew their story before it even began…he the lordly ninth Knight of Staffs and she the perpetual and august Queen of Justice…their coupling preordained…their love braided into a single compelling vitality…they blazed with passion…their inferno lit the sky and the earth…soaring through the heavens giving the people hope…pulling them from doldrums and sorrow…inspiring dreams and illusions…the people hurtled forth from tragedy and death…glowing with hope…illuminating the future…and the foxes called out to each other with garish voices and pranced through lush fields and glittering cities.

And from his urn he dreamed…and he felt the perpetual and imperious Queen of Justice devour him and regurgitate him into the ninth urn…he the dapper ninth Knight of Staffs thrust with great ceremony into her maw…the moistness and warmth of which he’d never experienced…he wrapped himself around her tongue…desperate never to leave… but like the eight other Knights he too melted… his essence spat and left to rot in a clay ossuary…the people once again returned to darkness…and the foxes howled  tawdry anticipation of despondency and dereliction.

 

And from his urn he dreamed…and he heard the battle cries of the world’s end…monstrous soldiers cloaked in darkness…roaming through desolation…plunging broad swords deep into earth’s barren loam…cutting its wretched mantle through to its empty core…splitting the planet into halves…riding them deep into the universe…crying victory into the utter silence of nothingness…and the ecstatic foxes rode with their masters and bayed joy. ©kcasady2014