I started working on another dialogue. I see it in the same world as The Carnival, and may tie the two dialogues together. Please enjoy.
Clown 1:
Insanity grips men when everything
they see is trouble free, and when rewards
like wild berries can be plucked at ease
their minds, for higher branches born, will shun
the lowly fruit and pluck their own despair.
Your counsel seems to me a fine blueprint,
and of berries I’m worn: I seek the meat.
Clown 2:
Of doom and gloom you always preach, brother,
and make that brilliant painted smile false.
Cannot reward, if still an egg unhatched,
glory possess to make your grin appear?
But your consent, though niggardly expressed,
I will embracing celebrate, and cheer.
Clown 1:
Thy cheer refrain; shun inebriation.
This course a pilot needs, and of the way,
this coarse outline you’ve given me tonight,
I without you only failure secure.
Away look from the wine! These foolish clothes,
do not let them make you truer the fool
that imitating such a mask, disguise
should prove itself unveiled unchanged.
Clown 2:
Can you despise our benefactor with
more ease than when you plunged your knife of late
into these thirteen men to be disposed?
While even now about our feet they lay,
the knife less bloody for the rag dirtied—
upon the counter still resting—and you
not drunk with your own devilish passion?
Did not this plan attribute I this muse:
Thoughtful transaction ‘tween bottle and I?
Are you so worried with such a bounty?
Often to bring forth one to three apiece,
and yet tonight thirteen we’ve snared by luck.
So double quota we deliver each,
and baker’s assurance keep to ourselves.
What of this plan troubles your fevered mind?
Clown 1:
Just this is still unclear: How quickly can
our doubly sordid profit we unload?
Unto what buyer can we sell with ease?
Conglomerate: whoever buys is part
of whom we cheat, and may indeed retell
the deal he made.
Clown 2:
____________________Be not the fool, brother!
Your mind so dim when with these pains partook
I try to enlighten? What need have we
to sell the corpse when twelve exchanged will make
our purses full of gold? We are the slaves
of ones who with black magic made us from
such reapings we collect. Can we not then,
in like manners, enslave to do our work
the pick of these thirteen upon the floor?
Clown 1:
But how, brother, for we no magic know?
Tale Told 