I will be secret. I will keep what you want hidden,
Tucked away in a spot no one has ever found.
I will wrap it up, box it, bury it, fold it into a blanket –
Whatever you require.

That one about the ghost and the murder?
That’s a good one. Last time, at the campfire,
Billy peed his pants he was so scared.
Tell it. Tell the one about the ghostly king
Come to haunt his people, wearing armor and his beaver up.
Tell about how he’s doomed to walk the earth
How he spends his days engulfed in purifying flames
Tell the one about revenge and avenging
Tell the one about betrayals and reprisals
Use those words you have
The ones that make us rapt, the ones we can taste
As you say them.

News are the things that are new
It’s a plural new.
When we have newspapers, they are recounting of that which is new.
Until this moment, I never thought of where
We get news. News is a product
Something on paper, or in a TV broadcast
Spoken by a serious man in a suit.
When we say it in conversation, to ask for someone’s news
Is to formalize the report a little. It’s like asking for
An update (which is a news report.)
But “what news?” is not far from “What’s new?”
They are, in essence, the same idea –
A check in about what has changed since the last time we connected.
I have discovered , though, that asking what’s new is
A peculiarly American greeting
That America is obsessed with newness –
We name our cities New.
We like products new
We like constantly changing
Ever new horizons
Leaving behind old ideas
Old traditions
Old ways, lines and structures.

Celestial rope tied into celestial knots,
Nestle him into a celestial net
From which he cannot wriggle free
Tether him here with gossamer twine
Or holy handcuffs of heaven.
May flights of angels pin him to his place
Glue him to the ground with Godly glue
Fix him where he stands with All Mighty Adhesive.

There is no contemporary thing we say like this.
We’d call someone my love or my sweet or my dear
Or if we’re being funny we might go so far as my good man
But none of these would serve as a good way to call someone
From a distance. I wonder if it was equally unlikely
At the time this was written. There’s my lord, my liege,
And perhaps this is only with royalty. Not being quite
Familiar with royal etiquette myself, perhaps one might still
Call to a king who might be in peril “My lord!”
It indicates a certain impossibility of speaking someone’s name.
It suggests to me, once again, that Horatio is not nearly so close to Hamlet
As everyone assumes. He seems, in fact, much more
Like an idealized loyal subject (albeit not of this country)
Marcellus calls him lord, too –
But he is Lord Hamlet, to him.
Marcellus calls him by his name.

A boffo blockbuster
Full of action sequences
Multiple explosions
A tragic love story
A heartwarming family subplot
Starring your big screen favorites,
Beloved by many, known by few.
It’s an old script
Reworked and remade
Multiple times -So many that no one recognizes the old form within it
And the original author is lost to history.
From the people who brought you all your favorite stories,
This new film will give you all the thrills and more.
Directed by Heaven, who’s gunning for an Oscar.

We don’t talk about issues in the sense of being children much
I’m not sure Horatio is using issue in that way exactly but
It does seem as if the issue he is speaking of
Will be the child of the situation.
What will scream its way into the world now
Out of this union of ghost and midnight and empassioned man?
We talk about issues a lot these days
But those issues don’t usually carry the sense
Of things born from our bodies
Of things we gave birth to
That carry our dna into the future
Though, of course, they do.

Like dessert
Or coffee
Or port
Or a cigar in the drawing room
Maybe a little chalky mint in a wrapper
Or a spoonful of liqorice seeds.

When we’re little, everyone praises us for our healthy imaginations.
When we tell a story, they are amazed and wonder where it came from.
When we invent full fledged imaginary friends, parents will take pride.
When we grow up however, without the proper channels, imagination can become a liability. It can make us desperate.
I am desperate with imagination, too.
Without enough avenues to play on, without toys or playmates, without a playground, my imagination drips out of me like tears – at inopportune moments, when I’d like to appear in control, or when I have a moment alone and the barricades have lifted for a moment,
It feels so good to let it out then
But I have to wipe it all away soon enough, blow my nose, toss the remains
And return to a very serious world.
Without enough art in my life,
I wax desperate with imagination too.