sonnet with no name

So I wrote this. (Trust me, it was harder than it looks. If Poe didn't like the format, why would I?)

I wrote it in the form of a Shakespearean sonnet, which is a fancy way of saying it's fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, rhyming ababcdcdefefgg and following a specific plot development pattern, heightening the tension in the ninth line and climaxing in the couplet.
Or maybe that was the fancy way..

Anyway, this is it.

In all the world is beauty great displayed;
The works of God which man cannot compare.
The mountains, oceans, forests all arrayed
With gem and stone and treasure all so fair.
To call this earth a trove would be unfit,
To call it richest wealth would be unjust;
Yet all these found on earth will surely flit,
And gold and silver both will fade to rust.
But is there found a gift as good as Grace,
Whose Giver shall rejoice to give it free?
What man shall then decline it to His face?
Not I, for surely was its purpose me!
___No greedy, fleeting riches for my store,
___His Grace then be my treasure evermore.

Okay, that's all. As always, tell me what ye think before we go to press, eh?
Loves,
~Jacob

Canterbury Tales, A Grim Look At

If you ever have the chance to read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, don't.

Here's a guy who had WAAAY too much free time on his hands. If he even HAD hands...he probably had to sell them to get more free time. Seriously, did somebody throw him down a well with a quill and a sheepskin and say, "You'll be fed this kind of food at these hours, now write something."

Anyway, he sure did write something. He came pretty close to writing everything, come to think of it.
Canterbury Tales is a story of 29 pilgrims—plus an inn-keeper host fellow and a Chaucer—headed to see the Holy Blessed Martyr in Canterbury. The pilgrims gather together at an inn the night before leaving for their journey, and at Chaucer ends up meeting them all and decides to disclose their junk to the masses in a kind of tell-all expose in the form of a poem. (Man, a brotha' can get away with murder if he do it with poetry.) Then they all get drunk—*ahem*, 'merry', my pardon I beg—and carry on in mirthfulness and whathaveyou.
Following these goings-on, Mr. "Everybody's a winner; 'Hey YOU down there, you can be a STAR!'" host-for-the-night comes up with what I find to be a really bad idea. I won't go into his exact quote, but he essentially ends up saying, "Heeyy everybody! Heeeey! Hhhhey! Heyyy evrybody! Listen up, I have a stupendous game. You will all tell two stories on the way to Canterbury, and two more on the way back. I will be the judge. Whosoever tells the best story wins a supper paid for by your companions." (So basically the other guys take him out to dinner, like THAT wouldn't be a tense meal...sheesh.) Yeah. That's sounds like something I would have said in the van on the way to camp and everyone would have just looked at me, and then gone back to their conversations.

And I love this. After the host sets up all the rules and stuff, he just decides that whoever 'rebels against his government' would be 'financially liable' for the trip. So there were no two ways about it: you're frapped.

The next morning, they get set to leave when Mr. "FIRST THINGS FIRRST!" comes bounding onto the scene with some straws, insisting that all must draw and determine who shall speak first. So a guy they call the 'pardoner' is chosen, and he goes into this monoHOGue about telling his tale. Seriously, that guy has the floor for about a week. And THEN he tells his story. I guess his strategy was just to put everyone else out of the mood for storytelling. Well, it worked on me.

So why am I saying all of this in the first place? Well, good presupposed rhetorical question, reader. The reason I am saying all of this is because I had a BritLit assignment about a week ago for which I had to write a poem "of at least ten lines in which you emphasize some characteristics of yourself." So, just that I did. But being the me that I am known to be, I (of course) took it to the next level-and-a-half. I used the same rules that Chaucer did: either ten or eleven syllables per line, rhyming ABAB, and I even limited my language to words that were used in the English vernacular at the time that the Canterbury Tales were written.
So I got a little carried away, but here's what you get:

Rode with them a minstrel whose bless'dness was shown;

Played not he a song that was heard a drone.
The themes which he played came thus from above—
The place whence that Spirit came as a dove!

All manner of wonderful song did come
Out of his heart whenever he brought forth from
Its sheath his lute to so skillfully play.
He made laud to the Father all of the way
Of this pilgrimage, and otherwise spake
Softly to bless his neighbor, and that drake,
The Devil, who willed other, to dismay.
He strode one place hence second half a day,
Then to the middle and hind hereupon,
With Holy Writ as inspiration drawn,
That all could hear and be healed, for you see,
His writs, as David's, did salve the malady
Of both great and young—the Lord anointed him.
And Oh! ne'er did a heart with such joy brim.
His laughter did oft spew when it oughtn't,
Yet for it no man was found to him resent.
To cover his head, he oft wore a cloth,
But do not think him in cleanness a sloth.
Not that his hair he did not keep well kembed;
For just as a seamster garments keeps hemmed,
So showed he great care for his golden locks,
And thus it became of a few stumbling blocks.
Therein was the need that he veil his hair:
I trow, it was to the maidens a snare!
And last, I again say his piety;
He showed in all his love for the Deity.
His love for the scriptures showed he not wanton;
A verse he would read and recite then anon.
That God would (and did) with honor him dight,

It would (and did) bless him and curse aright!

There you have it. Comments, kick-backs, sidebars, annotations, allegations, and rips are always appreciated.

~Jacob


Note: There will be more to come. Thanks for reading, guys!

Unprepared and Unexcused: a beginning

I mustn't think about what it is I am going to write. If I do that, I will [inevitably] write that which was never meant to be written.

Who is the one who is going to ask me about these things, anyhow? No one even asked me to write in the first place! And yet: here you are. So I will try to keep your attention, at least for 5 or seven minutes or so.

In the meantime, I will bring to your attention—as it has been brought to mine—that I am faced with the option of labeling this blog with a tag, I suppose for search related reasons. The bar says this exactly:

Labels for this post:
e.g. scooters, vacation, fall ____________________________

So what do I do with that, exactly? I don't have time to be labeling and associating all kinds of topics for the purposes of convenience! I've an audience to allure!

So don't expect to find yourself reading about pirates or yachting adventures or jellyfish or racial prejudice because I will NOT have this blog turned into a forum for, um, anything quite so specific, because as far as I'm concerned, such things are specific to nothing.
Here you will read, if you choose, of tensions and expectations in day-to-day life, nuances and pleasantries, and matters of trivial importance that will leave you wondering why you came here and me knowing you'll return.

If you disagree, think about this: I haven't even started toward my objective to keep your skeptic little tush plastered in that chair for the length of precisely one Blog. If I had, you'd still be reading this.

Interj.: If you are still reading this, it is too late for me to tell you to skip paragraphs 2 through six as they are unrelated to this blog and were merely recreational and could actually be contributing to your failing health. Why did you do that? What are thinking about? Anyway, don't feel bad about it; it was mostly my fault. But seriously, try to keep your head in the game. This isn't some kind of cosmetology school where you can just doze off through the reading sections and still pass your midterm. Cowboy up.

Oh, hi! If you're just joining us, today we're talking about Scooter's vacation fall. It looks like he's going to need to spend a little more time on the slopes. That Scoot'—always up to something!

And speaking of scooting up to something,

great.
Don't you hate it when a setup takes you nowhere? That is, of course, unless you are set up as the fall guy in a heist—then I'm sure you'd rather not be taken anywhere.
But this in itself was not all that great of a lead-in, so the fact that this blog's level of writing was not hurt much has me a bit worried. It should have come down quite a bit, but it doesn't seem to have affected it. This can surely be better captured through the majesty of poem:

"And when you fell from that great height,
was it not the raven who looked at you
and laughed because he knew the fact
that your blogs aren't that tight?"

Yea, verily. A curse be upon you, raven. For a thousand generations.

I just don't have the stuff in me right now to be captivating. I need some kind of sugary fruit drink or a swarm of bees or something. I know! I'll feign abduction...alien abduction. Well, I'll feign something, and it'll be worth your attention. You'll see.

In the meantime, I still haven't thought of a good way to get the reading audience engaged and entertained. But with the thought of bloggal entertainment on the mind, have you ever thought about what has become of blogs these days? They've become a breeding ground for all sorts of foolish thinking and mindless circumlocution. Listen, (for the last time), I'm all for keeping an online journal to record one's thoughts and recount precious moments for all to see, but we're making freelance writers out of people that shouldn't be allowed to own dictionaries. And then you end up with these loud mouth, over-opinionated, under-medicated people who think that just because their name is on the Constitution, that means they're supposed to write a blog. Well I hope they don't decide to bear arms for the same reason because the mortality rate of IMBECILES would be egregious.

And that's how to write satire. Tune in next week when we discover the differences between elegance and eloquence.

Or, stay tuned in and see if our hero can't find a way to keep his audience at peace. Seriously, there's a tomato on the computer screen—like, on the outside. And I threw it. This needs work. No, not work...confidence. Readers. I need food. Maybe I'll go drink a peach shake without ice cream and then make some mac n' cheese while I try to write my next blog. Yeah, that's what I'll do.

Press on to acknowledge Him,
Until we see His face,