Merci, Mon Valentineur

You made me smile.

I believe this is called a "poetic chuck."

Not chuck as in hamburger, but chuck as in a benign fist under the poetic chin.

Thanks, Peter lol!

Courage? That's the thing I let other people have for me.

I don't believe I have ever had any courage that was not vicarious.

I suppose literature is funny in that way.

"How are we to die without the consolation of literature?"--either Kurt Vonnegut or Voltaire...I forget...they were basically the same person anyway.

I would abridge that to "How are we to die?"

I think that is the more troubling question, and the one I would rather have solved (preferably by an obviation of the premise itself).

Now I am singing that little Mozartian bird-song.

Papageno/Papagena is as complex as it need be lol.

Why I thought I could ever do that Queen of the Night coloratura bravura moment is beyond me!

That bitch turns her larynx into one of those metallic birds Yeats wrote about!

Such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make and all that jive.

I think I had the wrong magic flute in mind.


    William's Valentine

O the bihilarity the bifocality
of it the prodigal returns but
as all the rejected evil you’ve
also ever made and done
coming home to be loved by you

O to be loved by you
in a great hurry
in so deep a hurry
forgetting whatever
happens is just a test

of our courage
O Tamino
from our past
the price of the realm
of nothing to fear.