Oh I laughed, Ken, but not happily...
Doug
On Feb 24, 2014, at 10:36 AM, Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> KING LEAR LEAVES A VOICEMAIL FOR HIS DAUGHTER REGAN
>
> Thou shouldst not have been
> old till thou hadst been wise.
>
> Regan, pick up the damn phone! I know you're there, you're trying to ignore
> me, but you can't do that. Well, you can, can't you? For you I don't exist.
> But you exist. Pick up the goddamned phone!
>
> You sit up late with Cornwall your husband, scheming how to pry loose
> Goneril's lands that I like an idiot gave away. Even my Fool saw what I was
> doing. But who listens to a fool? Not you. Not me. Not anymore.
>
> I dispossessed Cordelia for you bitches! It is too late now. She is Queen of
> France and I sit here, watching you plotting around me. Oh, I am vain and
> I'm older than dirt, and my senses misgive-roast beef tastes like Oscar
> Meyer salami. Sad, but now I know when I've beguiled myself, when I've let
> your vanity become mine. Sickening, sickening.
>
> I wanted to crawl unburdened toward Death. I'm seeing worse than death. I
> see my daughters oblivious or simply hateful. All right, girls, hear it: I
> fucked up. Is that what you want to hear? Your father is a moron.
> Superficiality was all. I am the victim only of my own bad choices.
>
> Remember when you were little-you'd watch the court barber shave me each
> morning? You thought it was funny.
>
> Then I stopped shaving. You were grown and it wasn't funny anymore. I could
> not look into my own eyes. I could not look at my face.
>
Douglas Barbour
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http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
http://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
Latest books:
Continuations & Continuations 2 (with Sheila E Murphy)
http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=962
Recording Dates
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Swept snow, Li Po,
by dawn’s 40-watt moon
to the road that hies to office
away from home.
Lorine Niedecker
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