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The funeral baked meats Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.

erainbowdLeave a comment

And weren’t the guests gossiping!
“Did you see that slivered boar sandwich?
So clearly the same boar we ate at her husband’s funeral.
Can you imagine?
Are those the same shoes?
The ones with which she followed her husband’s corpse?
Did she just dye those things to match her wedding dress?
How gauche! How uncouth!”

”I don’t know – – – why waste a good boar?
He’s already been roasted and everything
Throw it on there with the rice
Who doesn’t love sliced wild boar?
I could eat it for days.”

I prithee do not mock me, fellow student.

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I’m going to teach this line to all the kids I work with
Who inevitably endure more than their fair share of teasing.
I’m going to get them to memorize it and say it in multiple tones
With gravity and with fun.
They’ll try it with pomposity and irreverence.
Then, their assignment,
Their real homework,
Will be to say it, full out
When the painful words start flying.
I wish I’d had it on hand when I was ten
Sitting in the back of the bus
Getting called “Fatty Fatso”
While my friend was taunted with “granny granny glasses.” Or at that slumber party
When that straight haired girl called me a cow.
I’ve tried counseling children in tears
When someone has called them
“hairy arms” or “big head”
or whatever other uncreative slurs that children invent.
I try to explain how the taunts work
How it has nothing to do with
Hairy arms or a big head
But I know that no matter what I say that that child will likely be
Self-conscious about her forearms from that point on.
I don’t know what would happen if a ten year old
Suddenly quoted a Hamlet to a taunting bully
But I suspect it might shock an unsuspecting teaser.
If nothing else, he’d be likely to laugh and switch his taunting
to that crazy thing you just said
which won’t be your fault
it’ll be mine for teaching you such a funny phrase.

In the most high and palmy state of Rome, A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets – As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, Disasters in the sun; and the moist star Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands Was sick almost to Doomsday with eclipse.

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Hey, at least the horses didn’t eat each other!
Caesar’s death may have caused the dead to rise and make strange noises
It may have caused the sun to go dark
And the stars to rain blood
But no horses eating each other.
Amazing how the death of a monarch
Shakes the very foundations of life.
The dead rose up out of their graves even in anticipation
Of losing Julius Caesar.
Yet, why should the dead care?
What does it matter to the dead
Wrapped in dirty sheets
Who rules?
The earth itself remains the same
No matter whose flags are planted on it.
Why the dead,
Who should be past caring,
Would climb out of the warm earth
To gibber on the streets for an emperor, I cannot fathom.
Except for the fact that it makes a good story.

Such was the very armor he had on when he the ambitious Norway combated.

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When battling with ambition
It is a good idea to put some armor on.
When returning to the life you’ve left
It makes sense to put that same armor on.
Ambition is a serious opponent.
You must be subtle
You must be keen
Get inside its skin
As it gets inside yours.
Make your armor well
Forge it with love
With grace
With delicacy
The metal of the past will be no match against it.

‘Tis gone and will not answer.

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No shit, Sherlock.
Once a thing is gone
It’s a rare day when it will THEN
Make a reply.
Maybe the gone- thing will send you a letter
A postcard
Or give you a call on the phone
These days it might text you from the beyond
Or send you a Facebook message
But gone is gone
And you can question it all you like
But its answer will be on its own terms
If it says anything
It will be because the gone-thing
Has one last thing to say.

Thou art a scholar.

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You talkin’ to me, Marcellus?
You talkin’ to me?
Did you just “thou” me?
Who do you think I am?
Oh, oh, you’re “thou”ing Barnardo, are you?
He’s a scholar?
No, I am, I’m a scholar.
Didn’t they tell you I’m just back from Witttenberg?
Oh, what?
Sarcasm?
At this moment?
When we’ve got a ghost moving quite uncomfortably quickly in our direction?
Well yes I do think now is the time actually.
Do you just go round thou-ing all of your superiors?
Is this your standard practice?
Yeah, ghost, schmost
Oh. Ghost.
Ghost.
There’s a ghost here.
Wish I had a book right about now.

And Liegemen to the Dane.

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Not just the earth, no
We owe our loyalties to the men who put the lines around it
We bind ourselves to them
Like they are driftwood floating in the rapids
And if we tie ourselves to their buoyancy
We will glide through the rocky patches
Without being submerged
And if we bump along the shore
Or tear our clothes on sharp stones
Or bruise our bodies on the rocks
We won’t complain
Or release our bonds
No matter what waterfall we tumble over.

Barnardo?

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An Italian in Denmark
He found work as part of the watch
A good place for a foreigner.
In the dark of the night
He can stand on the battlements
And scan the horizon for lights
Or movement.
There are many foreigners here among the ranks
Sometimes, when things are quiet and the wind whistles by them as they change posts
They nod at one another and can smell the cooking of their mothers
Miles and miles away.
Mostly they stand. Stoic and firm.
All eyes, all ears
Hands clasped around a weapon
Holding it steady
Waiting and watching
Just receiving.
Barnardo? How will you know him?
By the tomato skin under his fingernails?
By the click of his accent?
By the smell of his musty doublet?
By the shift of the air around him in the darkness?
He is here to relieve you.
You rarely speak
His footsteps sound different
You listen – taking each sound apart
Is that his gait?
It couldn’t be –
Barnardo?
He.