What it is

June 2010: In a desperate attempt to stave off senility, the monkey began writing a poem a day. By summer's end he'd begun to run out of versified political rants and philosophical bloviations. Then he hit on the improbable idea of writing micro fiction in the form of Elizabethan sonnets. Eureka. The birth of the "Sonnets From Other Lives" series. Two hundred plus lives later, he's still at it.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

9/25
Sonnets From Other Lives: Gerald

Whan that aprill with his shoures soothe
triggers cherry blossoms in the quad,
the mad professor flees from his computer
to sing Franciscan canticles to God.
Odd behavior from an existentialist--
some vestigial ghost from Catholic school?
Did he become a medievalist
because he was enamoured with that cruel
holiness--all those saints & martyrs?

Lusty students sprawl about the lawns.
Nature pricketh hir courages ever harder.
The term ends Friday with all of them gone
to strange strondes: resorts, motels, lodges.
So longen folk to goon on Pilgrimages.
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1 comment:

  1. P. A .HofmannSeptember 25, 2010 at 2:34 PM

    Gerald--ditches that article on "Sexual Innuendo int the Wife of Bath's Tale" that is due too damn soon to celebrate a fine spring day with a walk around the quad at the UW. He drops lines from the Canterbury Tales:
    "Whan that aprill with his shoures soothe"
    (wahn that ahprill with his shoor-es stoot-uh)
    ie: When April with his sweet showers.

    "Nature pricketh hir courages" (Nah-choor prick-et here coor-ahges) ie: nature pricks their hearts
    "Strange strondes" (stran-guh strond-uhs) ie: strange places
    "Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages" ie: then people long to go on pilgrimages

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