"Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!"
Polonius (Hamlet)
~~~
read these words in a past, as a punk teenager,
back in the mid-you-wouldn't-believe-it-flintztone-age
returned to them, nowadays
when I am seven by ten decades squared, older not wiser
three people told me
what a lucky man I am today,
Even before the noon hour dare arrive,
a shocking delivered by an electrocardio telegram,
thus instigating a product recall of Shakespeare’s blessing season,
drawn from a stale teenage memory storage fast depleting
"This above all: to thine ownself be true"
which denies the false escape
of being false to any human
ingesting this thrice lucky man observation
into the internal inward-facing telescoping observatory,
where I map the true course of the
star-stories
well held in the constellations of my life,
never forgetting that this holistic ecosystem that is my
mind~body must evaluate the truth of this claim
its veracity will differ when assayed by
the big toe of my left foot from whence the poetry comes,
as well as those other interfering guys,
body, mind, heart and soul,
then re-evaluated by the internecine warring of those whiny parts,
the tongue, the hands, the eyes saying me, me,
that perforce means a dynamic constant changing
of every thing
in other words,
thine own truths are fluidity ever changing,
the mapping of your blessings,
best done in pencil with room
for expansion, reversal, and misdirection
have I lost you dear reader?
My Left Foot squeals,
fools, you just hammered
three more nails in the coffin of his depression,
where woes and toes know the inevitable repetition of the troubles he has already deemed, and now foreseen are yet,
ladies in waiting to take him to the tower
My Mind says
in obvious aspects people, you are 100% correct,
but the Inquistors are not fooled, patient in their queries;
My Body simply asks, err, does that make me look fat?
My Souls defers with a yada yada, not my problem, deal with it...
The facts tranverse and reverse,
Ah, the truths of my blessings
As much confusing and last defusing
The little drummer boy marches me in reverse retreat,
while shouting out in time a marching refrain:
Luck can be stored, used then, never more,
Its algorithm, a lifetime calculation,
Woe is me, thrice, deemed lucky,
But the map of my blessing reveals my positioning,
At the map-edge I stand, the last border be just ahead,
Seasons, maps, blessings must stop to journey,
What others see upon me outward, outdated,
All maps, all blessings are black-line bounded,
So too, am I, bounded, confused and confounded
The algorithm computes my nine lives are now radium depleted,
The shell, the shell no longer can be fired,
Even the half life has evaporated, used,
Though it looks fit, the luck has eroded, the feet now touching
My map edged in black, its legend, of use, never more
November 2017
Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay’d for.
There; my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means ******.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch’d, unfledged comrade.
Beware Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!