We slowly drove – He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too,

That might be personal to me, as someone who grew up with a dad who was what you might call a campfire guitarist — not a performer, just a dad who used to entertain us with songs like "Dark as a Dungeon," a little folk tune about the lethal dangers of coal mining. Maybe to you, it's not the guitar.

I placed a jar in Tennessee,    And round it was, upon a hill.    It made the slovenly wilderness    Surround that hill.

I’m off again: muck, pond, ditch, residue of any thrillingly dead thing.

My name is OzymandiasOzymandias Pharaoh Rameses II (reigned 1279-1213 BCE). According to the OED, the statue was once 57 feet tall., King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

I was gonna write about Mama's funeral but Lamont and Ms. Marcus going back and forth zapped all the ideas from my head.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England.

They are free men, but I am banishèd. And sayest thou yet that exile is not death? Hadst thou no poison mixed, no sharp-ground knife, No sudden mean of death, though ne'er so mean But 'banishèd' to kill me? 'Banishèd'!

Speakest thou from thy heart?

but you live uncuddled, uncoddled, can’t be bought at Petco and fed to fat snakes because you are not the maze-rat of labs: pale, pretty-eyed, trained.

english sits in her mouth remixed so “strawberry” becomes “eh-strawbeddy” and “cookie” becomes “eh-cookie” and kitchen, key chain, and chicken all sound the same.

That passed over,     this can too.

Everywhere men sat     shackled in sorrow, expecting the worst,     wishing often he and his kingdom     would be conquered.

For Beadohilde     her brother’s death weighed less heavily     than her own heartsoreness once it was clearly     understood she was bearing a child.

As he sang these tender strains, the very ghosts shed tears.

With my song I will charm Demeter’s daughter, I will charm the Lord of the Dead, Moving their hearts with my melody. I will bear her away from Hades.

why did you turn back, that hell should be reinhabited of myself thus swept into nothingness?