Okay – this has been punctuated with a semi-colon
And my little rule is to have these lines be full sentences – but I break it because
I just have to deal with these buttons.
These curious buttons
Disclosed
Closed
Undisclosed before disclosing.
Are infants of the spring, flowers?
I imagine so
But do flowers have buttons?
And button, button, who’s got the button?
The button of the belly
The button of the shirt
The pants
The clasp of a bag
The leather strap of a shoe
The rim of a cap
A jacket
A coat
A sleeve
Buttoning
Unbuttoning
Hiding buttons
Then revealing them.

Perfection ain’t sexy.
A spotless surface seem unreal, untouchable, distant.
It’s the dabs of mess
That really highlight our humanity.
Virtue without calumnious strokes
Is not virtue at all
But a fantasy
An ideal, chiseled into rock and polished out of form.
I fall harder in love with imperfection every day.

Oh moon
You do your fair share of corrupting.
I come to you for all my darker purposes. I’ve stood
On a large rock, perched over the sea, face upturned
Hoping for you to help turn someone’s affection my way –
Growing the trickle of romance in my blood
To a river. Breathing in moon beams
Breathing out vapors
Moist helpful breath
To run forward through the world
And work romantic magic.
When I’ve pleaded to something,
It has always been to the moon. Bathed in mother-of-pearl light,
I feel holy and profane. I will confess desires –
Put a wedge into them, widening the edges
Til they rush through like rapids over rocks.
I will dig my toes into the sand and long and long.

How possible is this, really?
To push back into the corners the rose-colored blush of feeling,
The heat and the quickened pulse –
Is it possible to cram it back?
Pack it in
Like soft silver into a hole hollowed out by a dentist and his drill
Layer after layer
Pressed into the sides
And leveled off at the bottom?
Put something on top of desire, fold winter coats and woolen blankets over it,
Weigh it down with old photo albums and out of date encyclopedias and it will
still find its way out
Or else it will eat through what contains it
Like moths, or mold or decay
Clawing its way free.

I see Laertes like a preacher in the pulpit here –
Suggesting the congregation start to tremble at the suggestion of hell.
Somehow someone suggesting one should be afraid
Always has a shading of religiosity
Because fear doesn’t usually need to be prompted.
Fear comes unbidden
Unconsidered, illogical.The way the screams just fell out of me
Everytime the mouse ran out from under my couch
No matter how many times I told myself I wouldn’t.
It’s only the unseen, intangible we need to be taught
To be afraid of –
And this rhythm, this cadence
Has the rhythm
Of those teachings.
It’s no wonder Ophelia
Compares him to a pastor
In the subsequent lines.

Many a song has won my credent ear.
I read today that men fall in love through their eyes, women through their ears
And certainly I have fallen victim
To pretty words or pretty tunes
Or the slow ascendance of a bass guitar
Or the steady rhythm of a drum.
It’s harder to think of a man I’ve been with who wasn’t a musician
Than to remember those that were. But I love my credent ear
For listening, listing all those songs.

Is Laertes saying that Hamlet is the main voice of Denmark?
Given his situation, it would seem to be giving him a lot of weight –
A lot of weight he seems to have lost with the succession of his uncle.
Or is it Claudius who is the main voice of Denmark
Who would have to give his approval
Or is the general public the main voice?
Do they have to vote on the spouse of a prince?
But once again, I can’t help but notice
The family tendency to talk around a thing
Instead of right into it.

The body, yielding,
Bending
Softening
To allow for passage for response or touch.
The body here is the public, I expect
But the image is so corporeal,
So like a pliant moving living person
Moving with the will of its head.
This is, of course, what Laertes is worried his sister’s body is doing –
Yielding to the willful head of state,
Doing everything he asks
Bending toward his desire.

Laertes gives Hamlet more importance
Than almost anyone else.
Mostly, Hamlet’s treated like a rebellious teenager or
in the case of his friends and subjects, as nobility – sure – – –
But here, the idea that his choices matter –
Well, we don’t see that much elsewhere.
Having been supplanted by his uncle,
He feels devalued
A less than market-weight prince.
No fanfare royal wedding would seem to wait for him.
The safety and wealth of this whole state seems quite disconnected
from the prince himself.
It feels like he could do what he wants
Because no one’s really paying him much mind.

O, but he’ll try.
He’ll wield the knife ahead of him
Hoping to shave off a bit here and hack
His way through there –
Like tunneling through a mountain
Bit by bit
Cutting his way through the world.