.
Once there was a play
that tripped along in iambs,
its writer anonymous,
except for his name;
his meaning ingenious,
except for his ending.
On meeting him at Starbucks,
sipping a latte or some such thing,
I hestiated to ask him anything,
wondering why I cared,
to trip on his iambs
or love his characters,
or to live at all.
But I had fallen headfirst in his plays
much like one who, thrown out of a window,
is saved by piled manure,
and knew his verse superior to mine,
so if our situation were reversed
so thrown on me, he'd have no cushion but void
and would have broke his spine on the hard ground.
I stomped up to his table,
where he was pounding on the laptop keys,
and asked him, "Please,
explain to me why Valentine forgives!"
He remonstrated, saying his two gentlemen
came from a Verona of the mind,
a fantasy of spirit, where perhaps
the dead could rise and waltz,
and one struck dead from some extreme betrayal
could with a word declare the traitor true,
and squeeze out all his evil with a hug,
have the maid-servant mop up,
and thus live on.
He was too smug, his laptop shone too new,
and sure his latte must have been delicious
the way he turned from me to savor it--
his modern fashions suited him too well.
He hardly looked like Shakespeare in his jeans.
"It can't be as it seems!" I said, and then,
sensing I'd said more than a stranger can,
I laid my foreign fingers on his arm,
and whispered what I wanted in his ear.
"I'll give you that and more," he claimed.
"Not here--"
And I told him I'd follow anywhere,
if he'd instruct me how a person loves,
and teach me to put new clothes on my soul.
"Costuming is half of the delight,"
he told me as he stripped me on my bed,
"Look at the shimmer of this shirt of yours--
there is no beast in nature has such skin.
And so it is when poets make up words--
shimmering ideals for something scared within
of its own vile and childish emptiness."
I got up quickly, pushing him away,
and seized my shirt and pulled it swiftly on--
"You make me hate you with the words you say,
and I'll never enjoy your verse again."
He laughed and said, "You sought me for a reason,
and you've warped time and words to lie with me--
but if, like Proteus, I dare to offend,
like Valentine, I rush to thwart the offender,
who, being myself, I can't help but forgive."
that tripped along in iambs,
its writer anonymous,
except for his name;
his meaning ingenious,
except for his ending.
On meeting him at Starbucks,
sipping a latte or some such thing,
I hestiated to ask him anything,
wondering why I cared,
to trip on his iambs
or love his characters,
or to live at all.
But I had fallen headfirst in his plays
much like one who, thrown out of a window,
is saved by piled manure,
and knew his verse superior to mine,
so if our situation were reversed
so thrown on me, he'd have no cushion but void
and would have broke his spine on the hard ground.
I stomped up to his table,
where he was pounding on the laptop keys,
and asked him, "Please,
explain to me why Valentine forgives!"
He remonstrated, saying his two gentlemen
came from a Verona of the mind,
a fantasy of spirit, where perhaps
the dead could rise and waltz,
and one struck dead from some extreme betrayal
could with a word declare the traitor true,
and squeeze out all his evil with a hug,
have the maid-servant mop up,
and thus live on.
He was too smug, his laptop shone too new,
and sure his latte must have been delicious
the way he turned from me to savor it--
his modern fashions suited him too well.
He hardly looked like Shakespeare in his jeans.
"It can't be as it seems!" I said, and then,
sensing I'd said more than a stranger can,
I laid my foreign fingers on his arm,
and whispered what I wanted in his ear.
"I'll give you that and more," he claimed.
"Not here--"
And I told him I'd follow anywhere,
if he'd instruct me how a person loves,
and teach me to put new clothes on my soul.
"Costuming is half of the delight,"
he told me as he stripped me on my bed,
"Look at the shimmer of this shirt of yours--
there is no beast in nature has such skin.
And so it is when poets make up words--
shimmering ideals for something scared within
of its own vile and childish emptiness."
I got up quickly, pushing him away,
and seized my shirt and pulled it swiftly on--
"You make me hate you with the words you say,
and I'll never enjoy your verse again."
He laughed and said, "You sought me for a reason,
and you've warped time and words to lie with me--
but if, like Proteus, I dare to offend,
like Valentine, I rush to thwart the offender,
who, being myself, I can't help but forgive."