Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain.

I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.

My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast;
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart;
For, Lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
   But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Unknown Variables


The phrase pokes me the eye,
demanding obeisance and a
poem,

My compliance is required,
not demanded, but required,
for the “unknown variables”
conundrum, roots around in
my brain cells necessitating a
cleansing,

Walking down the street is
fraught, unknown variables
everywhere, popping out like
cutouts on a law enforcement
shooting course, requiring
instant delineation between
killing not good guys and only bad guys,
no hostages, civilians and no them,
poets,

Can you test for unknown
variables?

Of course not.

Unknown is a condition,
that you cannot drop in
to ascertain what condition
your multiple conditions are
in,

Then there is you.

You,
reader, are an unknown
variable, ripe with nearly
nuclear reaction potential,
you are fissionable material,
capable of destruction of
my explosive
creation,

Assessing the poem,
do you conclude,
keep/discard, remake?

now,
poem a known variable, asking
that it becomes a parcel of
your multivariate inputs,
a familiar variable, that can
charm, destroy, mislead, or
even, fulfill a need, make a
reckoning, modify your brain;
all those dangerous things
that are permissible when
first you read a newly constant
known variable,
a perpetually reborning
poet?


my name is brandychanning