Love at a Reasonable Price

This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:

And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day

[Shakespeare, a speech by Henry V; we just made it shorter / easier to memorize]

[Bartleby’s Poetry Corner]

It isn’t hard to be someone who cooks green beans.
All that is required is that you be willing to cut green beans.
To cut green beans, you must have a knife and a cutting surface,
and you must cut off the ends and then cut them in half.

If you are willing to cut green beans, you can be someone who cooks green beans.
The cooking is absurdly easy–it was just the cutting in the way.
And the cutting’s only in the way because you lack the will,
not because cutting green beans is difficult.

For some people with some handicaps, cutting green beans is difficult,
but for most adults–healthy or not–cutting green beans is not at all difficult.

The reason why a person who does not cut green beans cannot become someone who cooks green beans
is not because the green bean community slams the door on their noses:
They cannot be someone who cooks green beans because of the nature of reality,
and no human opinion can adjust that verdict one jot either this way or that.

But you know all this.

BW/AMW/WTF

Walking in the desert in the nighttime.
Night air so cold when the desert’s deep asleep.
Sand gets hard from the cold.

Sitting in the car, smells like vinyl, feels like the cool stick-and-hold of cool vinyl on cool skin. The headlights train of vehicles lighting up the black and flaring cacti into existence. When you pass by they are draped in dark, fading away, but still standing proud like giant cucumber men.

Who will remember for you?
What’s to remember anymore?
Who will call you “daddy”? What’s the pottery-shatter now?
Now you live like a little gummi spider bouncing on the sticky gummi string.
Now you live like a child waiting for the show out in the cold with the sand underfoot keeping everything almost firm, almost solid

Never mind. The UFOs are all you remember.
The eerie round lights bobbing with the dirt road.
And a million other things that never happened.

AMW

[Bartleby’s Poetry Corner]

Assignment: meditate upon the FR Scott poem Villanelle for our Time, and then write a limerick, a sonnet, and a villanelle.

Limerick

That brotherhood that we had sought
with darklong, with smooth swampish thought
While we skiffed in pole-plops between
twisted trunks of swollen chords
Flakey bark ‘neath lichen hoards:
We learnt slowly to be less mean

Villanelle

Makita’s springing spine will throw
Her churning collie/beagle paws
Across the stretching sandy flow.

She loves to thunder to and fro
While wind and wave turn sound to gauze
Makita’s sprightly spine must throw

Her careening leaning tongue-out glow,
Her frolic wide-eyed spirit’s awes
Across a cool-earth sandy flow

What does carefree joy only know?
In service a wise ancient cause,
Her spine will oscillate to throw

A short-haired, short-legged, short-lived low,
Oft lonely mix of heart and maw–
All spaded, and with ‘naught to show–
Across the sands, within the flow.

Sonnet

At carnival, bright colored lights afloat,
crepe lanterns slide quick across
dark waters flat and quiet in the choke
of smooth old stone walls round our village floss.

At carnival, in winter cool and calm,
in mild clime, in peaceful, gentle time
the Good is easy like an open palm
and kindness forms a pleasant, comfy slime.

We nestle down, we ooze and laugh astream–
here sin has lost its sense and Goodness reigns
without debate or confusion between
the people meeting soft-faced on the main.

What must we gleam, what must we gather
while plucking festive evening flowers?

Copyright AMW

[Bartleby’s Poetry Corner]