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#hamlet
They’re making love in the next room, putting away any fires to be had, and bumming cigarettes with melody. I’m getting tired of science and art, which retrieves that which is hidden inside the heart; holy joys with barren leaves on a branch or a tree that’s stood since I was a child. Mother has the face of a goat, Father a lion, and I sit like Prince Hamlet on a piece of a wooden coffin with Ophelia bleeding through her nose, nobody knows, and Uncle is drinking himself to death in the garage blaring Bob Dylan. I buy a boat and bring it out onto an ocean ten thousand years old, ten thousand miles from everything, from paradise, from the fold, from ten thousand spiritual Roman soldiers with their wooden spears, and you whisper in your bedroom voice, honey honey honey. There’s a sting going through your head, constant, pulsing, stabbing, you’re enthralled by the woods decay, the judge of Israel, whereof you become soon aware of hell within. This is, this is not, the covenants, the constituents, the impetuous bleating of the eyes of day with silk golden hair flowing down, hands in pockets like Bette Davis, face like Marilyn, found dead naked like Marilyn, my photo of her ends up on the front page of an ultimately blank newspaper. Great land by the sea is all over and done with the light and tempts the veins of millions, angry millions, stupid millions, ***** millions, the sickness of one is the sickness of many and of myself, an angry, stupid, ***** self. Don’t tell me what I already know, Hamlet sees and sits back next to Ophelia, she’s crying, he’s sorry, he hugs her, giving her love, showing her love.
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Mar 14
Mar 14, 2026 at 4:53 PM UTC
Prince Hamelot
They’re making love in the next room, putting away any fires to be had, and bumming cigarettes with melody. I’m getting tired of science and art, which retrieves that which is hidden inside the heart; holy joys with barren leaves on a branch or a tree that’s stood since I was a child. Mother has the face of a goat, Father a lion, and I sit like Prince Hamlet on a piece of a wooden coffin with Ophelia bleeding through her nose, nobody knows, and Uncle is drinking himself to death in the garage blaring Bob Dylan. I buy a boat and bring it out onto an ocean ten thousand years old, ten thousand miles from everything, from paradise, from the fold, from ten thousand spiritual Roman soldiers with their wooden spears, and you whisper in your bedroom voice, honey honey honey. There’s a sting going through your head, constant, pulsing, stabbing, you’re enthralled by the woods decay, the judge of Israel, whereof you become soon aware of hell within. This is, this is not, the covenants, the constituents, the impetuous bleating of the eyes of day with silk golden hair flowing down, hands in pockets like Bette Davis, face like Marilyn, found dead naked like Marilyn, my photo of her ends up on the front page of an ultimately blank newspaper. Great land by the sea is all over and done with the light and tempts the veins of millions, angry millions, stupid millions, ***** millions, the sickness of one is the sickness of many and of myself, an angry, stupid, ***** self. Don’t tell me what I already know, Hamlet sees and sits back next to Ophelia, she’s crying, he’s sorry, he hugs her, giving her love, showing her love.
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7
And like Hamlet I hold the skull above my breast And I say “To be alive is nothing but a curse” And I say “But not to be, that shouldn’t be my choice”
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Mar 7
Mar 7, 2026 at 9:14 AM UTC
Like Hamlet
Take me down to your river My love, my love Even through you are bloated and waterlogged Hold me close to your soul, sew me into your flesh Let me lie in your lap and die in your arms Let the madness consume my heart like it consumed your mind Take me to your altar Dip me into the water Baptist me in death and clothe me in white My wishful lover, take me to your altar I would serve you till I am dead and buried yonder
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Feb 9
Feb 9, 2026 at 7:39 PM UTC
"Ophelia" except it's a placeholder name because I don't want to say their real one
“The salt of unrighteous tears” We balance our hearts on scales That are void of a truth within We cross universes seeking But the formulas of existence The one’s that make sense of loving something Fall in between the spaces That stretch between heartbeats We weep tears as salty as our oceans And pray to ourselves That flesh and love Swim together In that sea that knows Why….
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Mar 23, 2025
Mar 23, 2025 at 7:38 PM UTC
Why
to be, or not to be. the question that plagued the noble Hamlet, so plagues me now. I care not for the for the art with which he speaks, yet his core idea rings true. laying myself to rest, sleeping, perchance to dream. and in that dream of death, i might escape the nightmare of life. this seems the favourable route. but... "seeming" is the key. is it merely a shining illusion, this relief? for in the passing of life by one's own hand, he only passes his griefs to loved ones. is my relief worth the pain it would cause?
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Nov 22, 2024
Nov 22, 2024 at 12:19 PM UTC
to be, or not to be
To Poetry or not to Poetry, that is the Question!! Shall I write poetry or not write poetry? That is the question Shall I recite poetry or not recite poetry that is a suggestion Shall I study poetry or not study poetry that is an observation Can I be loved or not be loved that is the affection Can I deal with life or not deal with life that is called Life's Lessons Can I share my feelings or not share my feelings they would be my Expressions Shall I acknowledge or not acknowledge These are my confessions. If I will, if I won't, if I can, if I don't If I must, I will try to continue as I write. To Poetry or not to Poetry, that is the Question!! I would say yes If I was asked to do so, I would do it as a Profession B.R. Date: 12/7/2022
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Aug 28, 2024
Aug 28, 2024 at 8:51 PM UTC
To Poetry or not to Poetry
Hamlet, sharpen your sword of trust, for Macbeth is surely waiting. The specter of ‘Civil war’ stalks the land and the ghosts of senseless violence, so long docile, have come to hollow-eyed attention. Our cauldron was filled with innocence, as the ever-thirsty succubi require, the glory of war is being shaken, not stirred and the betrayal will be served as quick and cold as steel. #chefskiss
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Mar 18, 2024
Mar 18, 2024 at 5:40 PM UTC
civil war
to be or maybe just trying to be to be or not or yes or like you were without truly being well let it be... to get in or sometimes out of your own mind as if you would not even care about exuberance or sorrow naught or infinity nothingness endless to lay/to stand faling into a slumber is like an upside-down waking one sleep with many dreams inside a single step more or one less in open space or hidden path not knowing everything nor nothing knowing about yourself down here all seems to be strength/weakness/happiness falls or rebounds to be almost at all or only to-cease-a-little-bit-to-be light/abyss finally all seems not to be anything than always the same shamelesss swollen from so much foolish tension/internal/but eternal/rather flat/mat/fat/and mostly incorrigible                                                            "This is the question" by Gigi Caciuleanu, from "Miroirs"
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Dec 1, 2023
Dec 1, 2023 at 4:51 PM UTC
Hamlet
Poor, thou, little girl who thought Love would get to thee one day, Bet thou never thought to expect It would culminate in doom. And I am the resurrection in thy tomb And the life that speaks of mercy at close of day, Muddy Waters carry thou so far away From Polonius and Laertes, Tears in bloom. Denmark's Prince in shambles thine heart left, Dissembling and conniving against kin, In his heart only one ambition firm: Take back his rightful throne and fair Gertrude. Neither Shakespeare nor Victoria save thee could From the evil of the quill, it's own mind set. In the labyrinth of the parchment thine fate met "To be or not to be?" Aye, there's the rub.
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Feb 23, 2022
Feb 23, 2022 at 10:16 PM UTC
Ophelia
Ophelia’s swinging herself across her lake The salt of the water is hitting my face. Can she leave? Can’t she go? I’m fed up with the artificial show. Female insanity, that’s me. If I die today I’ll make it pretty.
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Dec 13, 2021
Dec 13, 2021 at 9:46 AM UTC
32percent
When you realize you’ll never seize the day, Never have the right things to say, Your judgments are always erroneous, You’re not Hamlet, but Polonius. Though you know that all things must end, It doesn’t spur your torments to mend, A dutiful advisor, Who never gets wiser. It must be so serene Never having thought you might have been- “Neither a borrower nor lender be”; I say, yet fear both apply to me. “To thine own self be true”; ah! Long ago, I missed that cue- And all do agree, The audience doesn’t need, my soliloquy. Under all this weight so crushing And the envy to just feel nothing, This act’s end, now I’m certain: I’ll die off stage, behind a curtain.
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Feb 2, 2021
Feb 2, 2021 at 6:03 PM UTC
Polonius
Waterlilies. And once, Rue and columbine (thoughts and remembrance) Pretty flowers, From me (of me) "Pretty Ophelia" floating with flowers. Pretty still, Nothing more. Was I never anything more?
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Jun 17, 2020
Jun 17, 2020 at 6:09 PM UTC
Ophelia
We feel ourselves rogue and peasant slaves - In that is no disgust. Collectively yet to have been stripped of Our formalities, plunged into fiction, devoid of normality - An undiscovered country, if you must. We doze cosy in dreams of passion Where space and silence nudges pens; they bleed. Though liquidity stiffens Flair and genius warm the air Assuming a pleasing shape, indeed. We weep under a broken voice When seas of trouble rise to strike us down. Remorseless - how can it pause to pick and choose? Treacherous - anxiety bedevils our news But temporary, false is its crown. When we think or moan, twiddle thumbs or disengage, There is nothing, not even tears, that dares to drown our stage.
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Apr 18, 2020
Apr 18, 2020 at 4:29 PM UTC
Elsinore's Quarantine
Ophelia was only remembered for being dead Floating daintily in a river, surrounded by flowers A spectacle for all eyes to see and drink up hungrily But one day she’ll breathe again and rise up from her grave White dress sodden, makeup askew, long hair soaked and tangled And she will realize she she is and break free from that image The one that held her dead for so long, drowned and lifeless And for once in her life, her short-written life, she will breath with ease
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Apr 9, 2020
Apr 9, 2020 at 6:14 PM UTC
One Day She’ll Breath
In the last breaking hour controlled under the iron-clutch of a dying kingdom hear the laughter through the halls as a new hysteria is swarming. and the people call for a book to foretell the final chapter, from the start to the end-to find a righteous answer. ... Just as the eagle's feather falls so do crowns from kings; caused of unseen catastrophes this leaves the knowing left to uncover- calamities hidden within ghostly visions- sworn to loyalty of vengeance, as fakers cry a false mourning. ... A holocaust of happiness leaves the young prince with only questions to live- to die- to love- to try, and seek his name a meaning for those we lose we lose parts of ourselves madness to some is just a gentler grieving. ... So plunge your pen into the sky and write the years as they come by to time tragedies are just one blink shy of a happy ending. S H A K E S P E A R E . . .
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Mar 6, 2020
Mar 6, 2020 at 9:44 AM UTC
Hamlet
Denmark’s a prison Where all are guards and all are inmates - I must be the Queen For I am held in chains, Caught by the currents of my own thoughts; Alas – I never learned to swim. I am an echo chamber, A thought is a ball kicked over and over and over and Can I not pass law to cease this bruisement? Goal! I speak, And my thought is no longer contained within me But in the world, circling the pates of the court. Sweet, your lover calls you, Even now; As the battle with corruption corrupted you. Justice, you promised me; I no longer believe in justice. I loved him, though his love was a leash; You took from me my cage and now I cage myself. Scheming and plotting against schemers and plotters – No longer knowing ourselves as once we did, No longer viewing the world as what it is – If only I had seen! You would not have abandoned me now. You will not come again? You will not come again. The King is fallible, The usurper of God is not omnipotent; I see the traces of that which he strives to hide. His mask is good, true, but – A mask cannot hide all: England is the trickster’s smiling blade, I know so. I mourn you, as I mourn all that I know: This ends with the destruction of a nation. I miss your presence beside me. Your soft eyes, looking only at my face, At my face only. I was safe with you. Hearts mirrored in forbidden affections; Switch places with me, Let us not be ****** for desire. Marriage is man and wife, man and wife, You saw the lies. Kick, quick, pick the flowers, One for each noble skeleton. I show their secrets in petals and songs: The language of the mad, the insane, the crazed fools – Fool I am, I see all, hear all, know all. Hang their weeds in the weep of the willow, Cursed crowns of concealed corruption. I reach – A tear breaks – And I am overwhelmed by swirling thoughts, Sinking deeper into the abyss of my mind. Smiling trickster, smiling blade – Pretty Ophelia! A will not come again. I will not come again. No one will mourn me, There will be no one to remember: This ends with the destruction of a nation.
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Sep 25, 2019
Sep 25, 2019 at 2:37 PM UTC
Ophelia
Denmark’s a prison Where all are guards and all are inmates - I must be the Queen For I am held in chains, Caught by the currents of my own thoughts; Alas – I never learned to swim. I am an echo chamber, A thought is a ball kicked over and over and over and Can I not pass law to cease this bruisement? Goal! I speak, And my thought is no longer contained within me But in the world, circling the pates of the court. Sweet, your lover calls you, Even now; As the battle with corruption corrupted you. Justice, you promised me; I no longer believe in justice. I loved him, though his love was a leash; You took from me my cage and now I cage myself. Scheming and plotting against schemers and plotters – No longer knowing ourselves as once we did, No longer viewing the world as what it is – If only I had seen! You would not have abandoned me now. You will not come again? You will not come again. The King is fallible, The usurper of God is not omnipotent; I see the traces of that which he strives to hide. His mask is good, true, but – A mask cannot hide all: England is the trickster’s smiling blade, I know so. I mourn you, as I mourn all that I know: This ends with the destruction of a nation. I miss your presence beside me. Your soft eyes, looking only at my face, At my face only. I was safe with you. Hearts mirrored in forbidden affections; Switch places with me, Let us not be ****** for desire. Marriage is man and wife, man and wife, You saw the lies. Kick, quick, pick the flowers, One for each noble skeleton. I show their secrets in petals and songs: The language of the mad, the insane, the crazed fools – Fool I am, I see all, hear all, know all. Hang their weeds in the weep of the willow, Cursed crowns of concealed corruption. I reach – A tear breaks – And I am overwhelmed by swirling thoughts, Sinking deeper into the abyss of my mind. Smiling trickster, smiling blade – Pretty Ophelia! A will not come again. I will not come again. No one will mourn me, There will be no one to remember: This ends with the destruction of a nation.
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61
And in the morning I awoke, sleep wearied and bloated by experience, to find all just as it had been but nothing the same... The pale cast of nihilism hung limp over the morning's hillside where an inconspicuous mist had once resided. Bless my mother's innocent attempt to patch up my Mind's muddied terror with a strong tea in her best china by the bedside. My boyhood mattress began a demented laughing in the face of brothers with graves for beds as I was, once again, swamped with guilty memory of the unheroic dead. Those gentle youth with minds full of the names of wild flowers and the rules of garden cricket wrenched from the safe musk of mothers to the mud and shrill choir of the shells. The Air she would weep for the loss of another pair of lungs she'd never inhabit again. All the while, the Earth rejoiced at the return of her creation. That clay that once grew tall. Outwards from the rib. All for some fantasy and trick of the flame.
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Sep 5, 2019
Sep 5, 2019 at 6:22 PM UTC
For the Unheroic Dead
Ophelia swimming, Drowning in madness As Hamlet’s body falls down From his poisonous pain Romeo with his potion And Juliet with her dagger Was it love that brought them together? Or cruel fate?
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Sep 2, 2019
Sep 2, 2019 at 2:47 AM UTC
is it still a tragedy if we both die in the end?
Madness like a red coat Around her throat Drowning in the ruins Of her own misery And Own sorrow O’ dear child, You should have stayed In that garden of yours Among the myriads of Growing daises And Gifting each of us a violet For centuries to keep But how long can Leaves shade you From the Many faces of fate— The cruelest ones always name after us, Victims. Dwell in the many layers of rosemary and pansies; Look how is ironic history just became With its indelible smell of Fennel and Columbius ; Drawn towards the many Spun webs of the Golden singing spiders— She floats amongst the Water lilies From here on.
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Feb 18, 2019
Feb 18, 2019 at 10:01 AM UTC
Ophelia
When I die, I hope it is like my dreams. In that way, death would not be so fearful, A remedy for my thoughts when I sleep. In return, I dream of my death by this Stuff that so haunts my dreams. To be scorns of Time and its aching length, calamity Of so long life. Yet we so dread something After death, a no-mans land from where no One shall return – this makes us bear our ills. We fight. We suffer. We are wounded, all. So we are cowards that do fear our deaths, For we fear the unknown, those we know not. Instead we dream that dying is dreaming, To sooth our conscience and minds from unreeling.
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Nov 18, 2018
Nov 18, 2018 at 9:08 AM UTC
A sonnet inspired by 'To be, or not to be'
It’s a fallacy, ‘to be or not to be’ actors strutting and pouting across a stage, their black shoes burning holes into the painted wood, Their words lacking conviction each action, merely an action, but it’s what they have to work with that holds the key, he secret ecstasy, The escape route from Hell Knowing that, given the choice, ‘to be’ is not where the scales will settle. We are wanderers clutching at straws of adventures, but we will pick the short one, eventually Where then do we go? When there is no ladder made of gold to climb. no pearly gates nor a wizardly, kindly face ‘The play’s the thing’ wherein we catch the conscious of ourselves
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Nov 12, 2018
Nov 12, 2018 at 12:36 PM UTC
Amateur Dramatics
If you are Horatio, let me be Hamlet Because I need you right by my side If I must face what is to face If you are Horatio, let me be Hamlet Because if I face what is inside I might need you to be my brace If you are Horatio, let me be Hamlet Because if I need someone to hide All the ghosts I see, it’d be my ace If you are Horatio, let me be Hamlet Because if I get caught up in the tide I’d need you to bring me down from space If you are Horatio, let me be Hamlet Because when my hands are seldom tied I’d need you to come unlace If you are Horatio, let me be Hamlet Because if there is someone to be alongside You’d be in just the right place Because if you are Horatio, let me be Hamlet
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Aug 21, 2018
Aug 21, 2018 at 10:46 AM UTC
If You Are Horatio, Let Me Be Hamlet