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Country Life

The country village life

picturesque and quiet

as an anodyne

for an angry spleen.

I recommend you try it.

The paucity of stress

is salubrious, unless,

you need the hype,

of the urban type,

you’d better change address.

But if you stick and cherish

your position in the parish,

know the vicar,

and his liquour;

Life won’t be so nightmarish.

About the social common green:

make certain that you’re seen

with horse and habit,

dogs chasing rabbit,

and at the pub,

where all convene.

Aspiring to the Manor Born?

taxes are a constant thorn.

pretentions do cost,

your soul is lost,

and you’re looked upon with scorn.

To be gentry you must have a crest

or you can lay your pretentions to rest

it’s really quite vital

to acquire a title

Hereditary, not life, is best.

With your new title you buy an estate

how large is how they equate

you from a lord or a squire,

how many servants that you hire

and the dogs you’ll presumably mate.

Now that you’ve reached you’re fine goal,

and your life is now on a roll,

it does seem to appear,

by this titled veneer,

that you’ve traded your integral soul.

 

Shakespeare has an arrangement with the Devil

It was just another chilly night

when Hamlet’s aunt, called “Big Lenore”,

was decorating a lower dungeon

in chains and chintz

when something gruesome

made her wince.

It had made audacious inroads

into her Constance Spry,

and seeing that, she let out a cry:

“Out, out damned spot!”

Oops! I quote the wrong production,

that was Lady Macbeth’s induction

to the miseries of murther

I’ll leave it at that and go no further.

“I’ll get that rat, who

chewing my Constance’ silk,

and fry him and all his vermin ilk!”

And with out Much a do and

dreadful calm

she waited, anticipating, when she’d embalm

that artless rodent without compunction.

“He’ll pay for his insensitive rambunction!”

It’s said today she haunts that cell.

They wouldn’t take her down in Hell.

“She plays too rough!”

the devil cried,

“We’d all wear chintz and be Constance Spryed!”

Dorothy Parker’s dream suitor

The one and only perfect limousine,

sent by he,

whisked me off for some haute cuisine by the sea.

The table was set with a single rose,

in a vase

that conveyed romance I suppose

for thought “Did he ignore expense?”

Said he “Let the limousine wait!”

At what cost?

Not so lost;

He told me he got a special rate.

 

You might not lunch in this town again (or Eaten alive.)

Gathered at the Algonquin’s famed Round Table

where the best wits, as they were able,

traded quips and partook of lunch.

They were a spirited ravenous bunch.

Where the riposte had to be sharp and fast.

If your wit was slow you wouldn’t last.

Mister Wollcott and Mister Benchley

both seen as essentially

the cornerstones of this Literatti

that fed the fire of the gliteratti.

Some times the mood became much darker

with sardonic wit from Ms. Parker.

Scathing and lampooning as they were

You never could be very sure

From their smiles and barbed bon mots

whether you were friend or foe.

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