Shakespeare

NaPoWriMo 2023 (Day 4)

I write many poems. But I’m a lazy poet. Nowadays, I lean heavily on free verse, simply because it is easier.

My Day 4 NaPo (I pronounce, ‘nay-poe’) assignment was to write a triolet poem. It is a short, but strict form of eight lines, some repeating (verbatim), with a strict meter (iambic tetrameter) and rhyme scheme (ABaAabAB).

Except for NaPo, I would not have written this today. I seldom post on Tuesday. I confess to being inspired and influenced by the Bard’s Julius Caesar (3.1. 273), at least thematically. And yes, it did happen on a Tuesday. I changed my lines so as not to use exact lines from Shakespeare.

Love’s Rath

He said, “Let loose the dogs of war.”

Let Hell be sent for you, dear friend.

Caesar lies there! Dead on the floor!

He said, “Let lose the dog of war.”

Let gods avenge my angry scorn.

Unsheathe my sword, my soul to mend.

He said, “Let lose the dogs of war.”

Let Hell be sent for you, dear friend.

Look both ways.
Forgive some, not all.
Mind the gaps and pitfalls along the road to vengeance.

 

Click on the NaPo button to see the challenge and more poems (not all are on prompt).

Friday Fictioneers for October 14th, 2022

The sweet, delightful, and flashy Mistress of Fiction, Rochelle, has prompted my muse with a bit of rain for the second week in a row. Combining strokes from her purple lane, she has splashed the Friday Fictioneer gang with a Roger Bultot picture of a modern, colorful, children’s playground park, seemingly after some precip.

Feel free to dive into our un-juried pool of players with your own fiction of fewer than 101 words. Avoid any litigiousness by giving Roger’s pic a gaveled tap, which will sentence you to review the brief code of conduct behind the purple bars on Rochelle’s blog page. You may want to get setup to be served weekly with a summons write early each Wednesday morning.

PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot

Genre: Shakespearean Fiction
Title: Time for Pettifoggers
Word Count: 100

 

I took my nephew, Dicky, to the playground after the rain had stopped.

He said, “Everything’s all wet, Uncle Billy.”

“Water keeps the insufferable brats and bullies away. Now, go play.”

“There’s lots to climb on. But why no swings or rides?”

“Lawsuits. The lawyers forced the city to take them all away.”

“What are lawyers?”

“People who profit from the misery of others.”

He ran off to play on the wet climbers and such.

“After this,” he yelled, “the first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”

“A noble goal, Lad. You’re a chap after the old bard.”

 

Look both ways for the future of the young.
Mind the gaps and dangerous traps, but a life without risk can be dry and vapid.

Note: “Let’s kill all the lawyers” is a line said by Dick the Butcher in William (Bill) Shakespeare’s Henry VI (Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2). It is among Shakespeare’s most famous and most controversial lines.

Click on the cartoon to fire up more wonderful flash stories by the fantastic Friday Fictioneers writers.

 

Sammi’s Weekender #260 (omphalos)

A big congratulatory shout out to Sammi for five years of weekend wonders.

Click on the omphalos prompt for more 91-word creative wonders on Sammi’s blog page.

Navel Gazing

Am I lost, have you seen me?
Am I crying or standing angry?

I listen but I also speak,
I read but I write, I love—
but I also hate and abominate.

I must find myself,
so I may contemplate my bile.

Every day, untethered, to consider
my center, my core omphalos
being wisely chosen.

Not fooled by feelings or desires,
looking deep and true
before winter blows

that last breath from my chest,
before my dust returns to the cosmos
before it is too late,
true to myself, my love.

Look both ways at your best and the worst.
Find the true you without judgment or odium.
Mind the gaps and look there too,
for the stain of truth is better than vain and useless glory.

Poetry: No Rest for the Wary (NaPoWriMo) Day Twenty-seven

Today I’m challenged to remix a Shakespearean sonnet. I was offered several methods and any form, but I decided to write a new poem that expresses the same (or similar) idea as Shakespeare’s Sonnet XXVII, click here to read it (it is the 27th day, I like that number, and the Bard’s poem). I did 14 lines of about ten syllables (semi-sonnet?) with little attempt at iambic pentameter. While the rhyme scheme is imperfect, it worked for me.

Oh, I feel so tired and I’m so sore,
my poor old body can’t take it no more.
For this poor soul, it’s early to bed;
then begins, those voices in my head,
the muses of my mind. My body is done.
Listen to us–speaks my imagination,
I need to rise-up, and write all this down,
the body says no, but the mind says go.
I’m so torn between both sleep and to act,
no matter the loss, either way I loose;
for my body to relax, and my eyes to close;
hello, hello, we have words for you too—

damn it to hell, will this day ever end?
Will I rest my soul? And love you my friend!

Look both ways, for rest and for work.
Mind and write down the gaps, lest our muses desert us.

Poetry: To My Spirit Love

“A poem is never finished, merely abandoned.” Or something like that. In this case, I have kept this poem in the files of my computer for more than a year as I worked and reworked it. Time to let it go.

With the blessing of Mary Oliver, as I learn to write poetry, I try to write as the masters do or did (I copy, or emulate, them). In some such cases, I re-write a poem line by line. In this case, I simply rewrote the poem with more contemporary English vernacular, changing words and lines to my liking. I hope some spirit of the original piece remains. Sadly, I’ve lost track of the original poem: perhaps it is from the Bard’s R&J. I confess to an embarrassing lack of recall.

Sorry. I tried.

Maybe someone will comment, “this may be from….”

To My Spirit Love

Would you be the love in my heart?

Then take the hard-path from deep in you, to us.

Can you be my Lover, and still be true to who you are?

Turn over your passion with love and with lust

Stay loving and gentle in all the ways deep within you

Be true to you but bring all your grace into us.

Rag off caution and care, pour love and praise on me.

Satisfy me with all the love and devotion in your heart

Remain true to yourself and loyal to our blissful passion

Bring your best love to our spot and love me today

Would a love goddess so heavenly bless me?

Shall our endless love be your heart’s eternal duty?

©Bill Reynolds, 11/8/2018

Look both ways in love.
The best hoped for outcome is seldom considered.
Miss not the gaps,
those unseen and unfilled spaces upon which we so often trip and fall.

S – Sonnet “Seeking the Truth” (NaPoWriMo #22)

This, my first sonnet, was difficult. It was also fun and I learned more about the challenges of writing poetic. I want to work more with meter and rhyme, but now’s not the time.

I attempted to write in the Shakespearean tradition of a sonnet, with 14 lines of 10 syllables each, with a rhyme scheme of abab, cdcd, efef, gg; and the iambic pentameter. Like we all know what that is, right? My humble apologies to the Bard for attempting such a sacred task. 

***

Seeking the Truth
by Bill Reynolds

In seeking the truth, I require some proof,
My goal to touch some real conclusion.
A quest to discover both reason and truth,
The turning of pages led to confusion.
Noble the search for answers not pallid,
From myth; if I am, then god must be too.
From science we ask, a source that is valid,
From faith of past, must it be now so true?
These are the chains of unfounded mystique.
None of this means any absence of love,
Admit to the truth, there’s no god to seek.
My freedom is not a power above.

I found this truth after seventy years,
Loving all others is more happy cheers.

***

Look both ways and you’ll see them coming.
Minding the gaps will keep your heart running.

Dark Side

DThis may be the most difficult topic for me, but it’s early in the A-to-Z Challenge. I may find subjects that are greater challenges. Regarding the dark side of human nature, I would simply prefer to accept it and move on. My research of our dark nature has revealed that we humans actually want to deal with it in reality, art, life, drama, poetry, fiction, behavior, and nature. Many of us admit to a duality of human nature, but even more of us reject the dark truths.

Dark PoetryMy dark side calls to me. I ask, “What do you want?”

It calls again. “Stop!” I say, “You’re bad. Nobody likes you. If I accept you, nobody will like me.”

Through art, literature, and life I feel the tug and I hear the voice. “To be fully human, you must accept and understand me. Fear me not, judge me not. Your rejection of me is ironically exactly what your fear is about—ego.”

Am I imprisoned by my own thinking? Aren’t we all? The Bard speaks to me through Hamlet, “Why then ’tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.” Do I judge the dark side unfairly? Is it my thinking that makes the dark side so – bad? If I pursue the dark side of human nature through art, literature, or science; is that bad? Would I be bad or become less good and more evil? What do I fear?

Embrace Dark SideIn addition to Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray), which I’ve read, I shall add the following.

Edgar Allen Poe
William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
Nathaniel Hawthorne (Young Goodman Brown)
John Keats (Ode to a Nightingale)
William Faulkner (As I Lay Dying)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Crime and Punishment)
D. H. Lawrence (Sons and Lovers)

Next week I plan to blog on Jekyll and Hyde from the classic book by  R. L. Stevenson for more on this topic.

Maybe then I can begin to learn and to eventually know. The maxim on the Temple of Apollo attributed to Socrates is “Know thyself.” It isn’t know thy good-self or thy light-self.

THE REBEL
Shaking his clenched fist at nobody
and shouting out in anger at nothing,
the proud, haughty rebel grits his teeth
and stands firm, straight and tall against
an enemy never seen nor ever heard;
crossing his arms in defensive defiance
against an adversary whose dwelling place
is in the dark, shadowy chambers of his
tumultuous and solitary, lofty and lonely mind.
[Dedicated to Albert Camus] ~ Kenneth Norman Cook

We may never know if the basic nature of mankind is good or evil, if we are fallen or risen. But we know something is there. We can hear it calling  to us. To know it. Embrace the darkness as well as the light.

I read this yesterday: “If you took a picture of your soul, what would it look like?”good-and-evil-2