Hamlet R.I.P.

Hamlet was a young man very nervous.
He was always dressed in black because his
uncle had killed his father, shooting him
in his ear. He could not go to the
theatre because his father was dead
so he had the actors come to his house
and play in the front parlor and he learned
them to say the words because he thought he
knew best how to say them. And then he thought
he’d kill the king but he didn’t. Hamlet
liked Ophelia. He thought she was a
very nice girl but didn’t marry her
because she was going to be a nunnery.
Hamlet went to England but he did not
like it very much so he came home. Then
he jumped into Ophelia’s grave and
fought a duel with her brother. Then he died.

From ‘English as She Is Taught: Genuine Answers to Examination Questions in Our Public Schools, 1887,’ as featured on Futility Closet. ‘By’ removed from line 3 and ‘he’ from line 12 to keep the decasyllabic pattern. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

Extraction

Black is blacker
Wheels turn
Lift drops
Water follows

Spinning tungsten
Teeth cut out
The black gold.

Some of the words written on benches in Chester-le-Street marketplace, spotted from a bus which drove on before they could all be copied down. Submitted by Marika Rose.

Gauntlet

They existed before my hands.
But it seems like I took them and
put them on my hands and put them
on other hands too. I like the
idea of rhinestones for fun.

Karl Lagerfeld’s response to a question about his gloves in The Peripatetic Fashionista, on the Imagine Fashion website. Submitted by Marika Rose.

The devil in its sights

It is, frankly, an amazing story.
The indomitable patriarch who will shortly
be forced to plead age and infirmity;

his headstrong son whose eagerness
to do what his father would have done
will shortly doom him;

the loyalists who will unquestionably fall
on their swords; an upending of the moral
landscape in which the miscreants once

happily functioned; and the virtuous newspaper,
perhaps the last great newspaper,
with a last great editor, who, long waiting

for and never believing it would get
such an opportunity, now has
the devil in its sights.

From Will the Guardian Bring Down Rupert Murdoch by Michael Wolff in Adweek. Submitted by Rishi Dastidar.

The Remaining Robot

The remaining robot continues to walk
but eventually also gives up.

He falls to his knees and tries
to reach the buttons
on his own back,
but to no avail.

Instead, he removes his helmet
and reveals a printed circuit board face.
He repeatedly slams the helmet onto the ground
until it is shattered.

Using one of the shards
as a burning-glass,
he focuses the sunlight
to set his hand ablaze.

The film ends
showing the robot,
completely on fire,
walking in slow motion
through darkness.

Part of Daft Punk’s 2006 Electroma DVD summary, discovered here. Submitted by Jason Davies.

When I’m Seventy-Five

It’s very difficult to fall in love
when you are seventy-five
because, at that age,
people are not delicious.

A quote from a colleague’s English Language student. Submitted by Miriam.

Way Out

You develop an
instant global consciousness,
a people orientation,
an intense dissatisfaction
with the state of the world,
and a compulsion to do something about it.

From out there on the moon,
international politics look
so petty. You want to
grab a politician
by the scruff of the neck
and drag him a quarter of
a million miles out and say,

‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.’

Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, as quoted by Futility Closet. Submitted by Marika Rose.

Measured

Vain and
shallow people
treating other vain and
shallow people in a vain and
shallow

way.

A comment on the Guardian website in response to Dating website for beautiful people dumps 30,000 members. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

This Is That

Do you know why teachers
use me? Because I speak
in tongues. I write metaphors.
Every one of my
stories is a metaphor
you can remember. The
great religions are all
metaphor. We
appreciate things like
Daniel and the lion’s
den, and the Tower of Babel.

People remember these
metaphors because they
are so vivid you can’t
get free of them and that’s
what kids like in school. They
read about rocket ships
and encounters in space,
tales of dinosaurs. All
my life I’ve been running
through the fields and picking
up bright objects.

I turn one over and say,
Yeah, there’s a story.

Taken from an interview with Ray Bradbury, via Genealogy of Religion. Submitted by Marika Rose.

Growth of a Poet’s Mind

We had hurried to the shelter of the alders
alongside the river Derwent, as dark clouds
drifted across the sun and a rain squall
swept through the valley. It passed in minutes,
soon followed by shafts of sunlight that pierced
ever-widening gaps between clouds whose
racing shadows traced the contours of the fellside.

As the wind subsided, the descending scales
of willow warbler song began again
and bumblebees emerged from shelter to feed,
shaking raindrops from the last of the bluebells
and newly opened wood crane’s-bill flowers,
a floral succession that marks the transition
from spring into summer in these woodlands.

Down at our feet a male ghost moth had emerged
from a brown chrysalis half-buried in the soil –
not without struggle judging by the damage
to one of its wings that had still not fully
expanded. It took its first uncertain
steps across wet grass towards the bracken
fronds, where it would remain until nightfall.

Ghost moths are unusual in engaging
in communal courtship displays at dusk,
drawn together in leks by emitting
come-hither scents that are reminiscent
of the aroma of goats. They hover
just above the vegetation, swaying from side
to side as if dangling on the end of a string.

From Country Diary: Blanchland, by Phil Gates in The Guardian. A few words removed for scansion: ‘a’ (line 17); ‘shelter of’ (20); ‘of a dozen of more’ (24); and ‘said to be’ (25). Submitted by Gabriel Smy.