The Dark House

The Dark House

"Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, 

deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do;..."

As you like it

so it will be.

So we said in cadence each to each,

dark and deep our eyes' forsaken night,

smoky our sighed, incited, worn insights,

and yet nothing was; indeed

nothing could be,

for we were whips alone, and well

deserving of the darkest home.

Now the sixth age flips

its skeletal slippery pantomime,

the mirror's jest, the frankly fumbled lines;

never jealous enough

in honor or enough bold,

sans heart, sans mind, 

sans everything but role.

(Do you not know 

I was a woman?)

So I speak to myself in this room of the voided cheek,

as false as the vows made in wine I used to seek.

 “Men have died from time to time, 

and worms have eaten them, but not for love.” 

 ~April 2016

Posted for    real toads

Challenge: Hat Tip To The Bard

Both quotes from As You Like It, by William Shakespeare, as well as several other lines extrapolated here, including the ones concerning the sixth age, the woman remark, and of course, the last lines.


Image: So Long As You Like It,  ©  Liz Huston via internet. No copyright infringement intended

Off The Shelf Archives~August

Most of us active in the world of internet poetry have probably heard by now that the celebrated Irish poet and 1995 Nobel Laureate, Seamus Heaney, passed on Friday, August 30, 2013, at the age of 74.

Mr. Heaney has appeared on my Off The Shelf page previously, but I have chosen another one of his poems to remember him by for this next month, Personal Helicon.

This link to the NYTimes gives a full obituary and biography for those interested.


You can find his poem here, in the Off The Shelf archives.

~*~

As always, here is a last look at the previous Off the Shelf selection, some songs from The Tempest, by William Shakespeare:

Some Songs

from The Tempest, by William Shakespeare

Our Revels Now Are Ended 

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.
( ~Prospero)


Ariel's Songs

Come unto these yellow sands,

   And then take hands:

Curtsied when you have, and kissed

   The wild waves whist,

Foot it featly here and there;

And, sweet sprites, the burden bear.

   Hark, hark!

      Bow, wow

   The watch-dogs bark,

      Bow, wow,

   Hark, hark! I hear

The strain of strutting Chanticleer

Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow.

Full fathom five thy father lies;

   Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

   Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange:

Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell.

                      Ding-dong!

   Hark! now I hear them,

                    Ding-dong, bell!


Where the bee sucks, there suck I,

In a cowslip's bell I lie,

There I couch when owls do cry,

On the bat's back I do fly

After summer merrily
Merrily, merrily, shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

Image: Miranda, by John William Waterhouse
Public Domain, via wikipaintings.org

Off The Shelf Archive~July

It's been one of those summers, and for one reason or another I have been quite remiss about changing out the Off The Shelf page. It wasn't for lack of a new selection, though.

Months ago in a discussion of a poem, my blog friend Karin Gustafson (ManicDDaily) sent me an excerpt from Shakespeare's play about spirits of air and darkness, The Tempest, and I thought of all the lines in it that are part of our daily speech, that I've heard in every kind of context my whole life.

It made me realize that there is a force in poetry that really can't be explained intellectually--it's a part of the flesh and bone of who we as human beings are, a unique invention to express ourselves in ways outside of the obvious, that makes the obvious reveal its far more hidden true nature.

Anyway, the example Karin sent me is now  here in the Off The Shelf Archive, Ariel's 'nonsense' songs, penned by Will about 1610, over 400 years ago. While the language is not really the way we currently speak, and while much of it is fully intended to be fanciful, if not outright silly,  I nonetheless am confidant that at some point, in some conversation, you have used at least one phrase from these.

I've added an additional song from Ariel,  ('Where the Bee...' ) and a (perhaps over-) familiar snippet of Prospero speaking at the very end of the play, because I can.

~*~

And now for something totally different: a last chance to read the former selection before it goes into the vaults, a poem called The Far Garden, by the incomparable Fireblossom (Shay Simmons --unless you can't stand living without it, in which case you can buy her book here on Amazon. )

The Far Garden

When I was young I asked,

Why are my arms made of blackberry vines?

And why do I

Most love to sit

In the far garden filled

With strawberries and mint?

Why do I have

Cat-tail colored hair?

Why is the thunderhead

A black mother bear?

Why is my skin filled with restless blue lightning

And the pull of the moon?

You dreamed it, child--

Is all that I was told, and it's

A sin to lie

A sin to lie.

When I was young, I ran

Away through the wheat under bright summer sun

Until I was alone

Save for sparrow and crow

With south wind for sign post

And further to go.

I sang to the quicksilver

Dead in the earth

Who lay with the bear's teeth,

The strawberry red,

And the sweet things that were.

You dreamed it, child--

Was all I was told, but the

Far garden called and we

Grew up wild

Grew up wild.

© Shay Caroline Simmons, 

2008-2013,  All Rights Reserved.

Used with permission.

from the book, My Mad Love; Poems Out In The Noonday Sun, 

by Shay Caroline Simmons

Image:Garden of Spanish Farmhouse, by Joaquin Sorolla, 1909
Public Domain