Midnight
Midnight in the Kingdom of the mad, time goes backwards here, and the gays and the women are locked away deep in terrible dungeons where busy ghouls sew their mouths up and their mad priests preach up is down, gay is “genital fetish”, “be kind” is to attack and denouncing is activism. Discordant chanted mantras echo round the torture rooms, in the towers of the castle mad scientists splice words into chimeras as making “cis-hets” and ugly grotesqueries to lumber about, all about the place are careful watchmen, their pale reptilian eyes darting around hungry for heresy. Sinister omens are common, it rains approbation every third day, a witch is burned every week and every year a new poison is fashioned by the alchemists which all must drink. Paradox has made the people weak and woozy, they have not the strength or spirit to fight the reigning mad King, his rotten advisors or their acolytes.
Midnight in the Kingdom of the mad and the air begins to change, the dank heaviness is going out from it, it is not sweet, but it can yet be breathed. A new group calling itself the “LGB Alliance” disturb the courtiers and exotically dressed speakers of new words, the blue haired overlords fall silent for a moment. It speaks of older times, when up was up and down was down, it is a reader of the books with the old words in and it knows what they mean and how to arrange them about. It brings an old rebellion already had and won, but now lost, an insurrection against the new religious innovations prescribing that all must think and say the same. It is a dangerous democrat at the lavish table of the mad king.
Midnight in the Kingdom of the mad and the King has left the castle naked with nothing but his fool, there is a storm outside, and he has taken to the blasted heath of Twitter to rail against fortune, he shouts at the rain and holds a mock court trying the disobedient chickens around him for high treasons against his rule. His courtiers and advisors bewail this impertinent intrusion and rain calumnies against the dangerous democrat, they whisper in the ears of the young, they bathe in half truths and whole lies, they are busy and frantic with a thousand words and polls and anguished groans. They were told this was impossible and wail and gnash their tweets and posts and GIFs. They are fractious and distracted with injustice, they are feral abandoned children on an island angry now the adults have arrived.
Midnight in the Kingdom the mad and the storm rages on with the possibility of a better dawn where the dark clouds have cleared and the noxious particles in the air have been blown away. A strange half-way time and half-way place, an in-the-middle space and time, like an airport lounge or a queue for a medical test result, a splitting of possibilities where one way lies tragedy the other success. Against the turbulent scroll of social media, the roaring waves crash into the castle of outrage but there is a stillness in the oubliettes, there is a creak of cell doors opening, the mad scientists and ghouls and reptiles pause in a moment of possibility they might withdraw. The elaborate paradoxes, like great statutes, are shaking and the King is not on his throne. It is Midnight and the morning may bring change.
