Sable

(This is a role-playing poem. It asks you to make choices, to perform minor actions and to imaginatively rethink your surroundings as you read.)

You’re standing in a beam, or in a shaft. Furred in it, in fact.

So you slide your head inside [the owl mask | the jackal mask | the mistral mask | the soap mask | the shepherdess mask | the rattlesnake mask | the honeycomb mask | the snow mask], and load yourself, like an overstuffed suitcase, onto the seat of your jetbike.

Look about you. I mean really look about you, away from the page or screen, at the spun wilderness. Find the point that lies furthest in the distance, and pin your gaze to it. That is an outpost of Surrenderpity.

Idly finger the throttle.

What is the highest visible peak, stage or spot? Skewer your gaze on it. This is a minaret of the City of Seize Everything.

Look the other way. What is closest to the centre of your gaze? Around there, according to the map: the hidden entrance to the catacombs of Diegodly.

[Choose a destination.] What is it you’ve tied about your waist, my friend, now caught and teased by a wind you neither feel nor hear?

Commentary:

There’s a rich history of didactic poetry (poetry that instructs), but it’s only very recently that this form has come into contact with tabletop role-playing games, and single-player micro-RPGs in particular. I like the idea, as espoused on the Reddit for Top 10 Games You Can Play In Your Head, By Yourself, that the result is ‘daydreaming with rules’.

This poem is indebted to (and seeks to channel aspects of) Shedworks’ 2022 game of the same name.