Dear Zazie, Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag. Has a cowboy ever taken you away? Do you want a cowboy to take you away? Rhett
The Lovers’ Chronicle
Dear Muse,
we vow to each other
this affection,
this shared vision
give and to that more
this we have
created together,
the sum of all we have read,
all the music we have heard,
all we have witnessed
all we have loved
gather while we may,
this held today
will not fade away
© copyright 2022 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved
a dream…
© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved
© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved
all the words i have read
all the friends i have made
all the women i have loved
all the sins committed
and times of madness,
well travelled in
not makin’ excuses
nor seekin’ forgiveness
for this existence
© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved
first talk of one thing
then another
while tranquil music
cascades
we try the effect
of exchangin’ verse
mine and yours
the words dispatch
the affairs of the world
the verses amount
to prayers
we offer up
to stave off time
to never let go
© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved
Pale Love Pale Rider
i know this;
the heart that shuts out
romantic passion
can write some dang
fine sad verse
finally feel
indigenous
immersed in verse
“I want you to feel
you deserve to be
with someone special.”
deserves got nothin’
to do with it
to not know what
it is to love well
or to be well loved
what you feel is real
what you do with it is all
© copyright 2016 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved
Since my words are currently dictated by the Dark Muse and my letters have been more about the lack thereof than love, I thought I would turn again to Jett for inspiration. He received an interestin’ letter from his friend Adele:
Dear Jett,
I have been in a cowboy state of mind for about a week now. A week ago, I had a dream that I was in Vegas with a cowboy. We ended up having a little too much to drink, well really a lot too much, and had the most amazing sex of my life. Then we went back out on the Strip, drank some more and got married by Elvis. He was taking me for my first horseback ride when I woke up. It was hard to think about it this past week and not want to run out and grab the first cowboy that turned my head. You are the only true cowboy I have ever known. It is in your blood. Something about that honest, rugged, cowboy way. Had things been different could you have loved me?
Adele
Stay tuned for Jett’s response.
The Song of the Day is “Cowboy Take Me Away“ by the Dixie Chicks. (C) 1999 Monument Records
Self-Portrait at the Clavichord with a Servant, c. 1577, Oil on canvas
Today is the birthday of John Taylor (Gloucester; 24 August 1578 – 1653 London); poet who dubbed himself “The Water Poet”.
He spent much of his life as a Thames waterman, a member of the guild of boatmen that ferried passengers across the River Thames in London, in the days when the London Bridge was the only passage between the banks. His occupation was his gateway into the literary society of London, as he ferried patrons, actors, and playwrights across the Thames to the Bankside theatres.
Taylor was also the first poet to mention the deaths of William Shakespeare and Francis Beaumont in print, in his 1620 poem, “The Praise of Hemp-seed”. Both had died four years earlier:
In paper, many a poet now survives
Or else their lines had perish’d with their lives.
Old Chaucer, Gower, and Sir Thomas More,
Sir Philip Sidney, who the laurel wore,
Spenser, and Shakespeare did in art excell,
Sir Edward Dyer, Greene, Nash, Daniel.
Sylvester, Beaumont, Sir John Harrington,
Forgetfulness their works would over run
But that in paper they immortally
Do live in spite of death, and cannot die.
Verse
- Lewd did I live & evil I did dwel
- Early author-attributed palindrome (c. 1614); reported in Dave Fisher, The Wonderful World of Palindromes (October 30, 2015).
- God sends meat, and the Devil sends cooks.
- Works, vol. ii, p. 85 (1630). Compare the 1735 Poor Richard’s Almanack.
- ‘Tis a mad world (my masters) and in sadnes
- I travail’d madly in these dayes of madnes.
- Wanderings to See the Wonders of the West, 1649; reported in Esther Moir, The Discovery of Britain: The English Tourists 1540-1840, page 26.
| Robert Herrick | |
|---|---|
Robert Herrick, 1904 illustration based on Hesperides impression
|
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Today is the birthday of Robert Herrick (Cheapside, London; baptised 24 August 1591 – buried 15 October 1674 Dean Prior, Devon); lyric poet and cleric. Perhaps best known for Hesperides, a book of poems. This includes the carpe diem poem “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”, with the first line “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may”.
Verse
- You say to me-wards your affection’s strong;
Pray love me little, so you love me long.- “Love Me Little, Love Me Long”.
- Give me a kiss, and to that kiss a score;
Then to that twenty, add a hundred more:
A thousand to that hundred: so kiss on,
To make that thousand up a million.
Treble that million, and when that is done,
Let’s kiss afresh, as when we first begun.- “To Anthea: Ah, My Anthea!”
- Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying,
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.
The glorious Lamp of Heaven, the Sun,
The higher he’s a-getting
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.- “To the Virgins to Make Much of Time”.
| Jorge Luis Borges | |
|---|---|
Borges in 1951, by Grete Stern
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Today is the birthday of Jorge Luis Borges (Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges; Buenos Aires; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986 Geneva); short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish-language literature. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and El Aleph (The Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion.
In 1967, Borges married the recently widowed Elsa Astete Millán. The marriage lasted less than three years.
From 1975 until the time of his death, Borges traveled internationally. He was often accompanied in these travels by his personal assistant María Kodama, an Argentine woman of Japanese and German ancestry. In April 1986, a few months before his death, they married.
Quotes:
No estoy seguro de que yo exista, en realidad. Soy todos los autores que he leído, toda la gente que he conocido, todas las mujeres que he amado. Todas las ciudades que he visitado, todos mis antepasados…
He cometido el peor pecado que uno puede cometer. No he sido feliz.
¿De qué otra forma se puede amenazar que no sea de muerte? Lo interesante, lo original, sería que alguien lo amenace a uno con la inmortalidad.
En mi juventud probé la mescalina y la cocaína pero enseguida me pasé a los pastillas de menta que me parecieron más estimulantes. Si las drogas producen el mismo efecto que el alcohol, no me interesan. Un borracho es evidentemente ridículo. He estado borracho algunas veces y lo recuerdo como una experiencia muy desagradable para los demás y para mí.
El infierno y el paraíso me parecen desproporcionados. Los actos de los hombres no merecen tanto.
Hay un concepto que es el corruptor y el desatinador de los otros. No hablo del mal cuyo limitado imperio es la ética; hablo del infinito.
Que el cielo exista, aunque mi lugar sea el infierno.
Yo, que me figuraba el Paraíso
Bajo la especie de una biblioteca
Mac Tag
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One Comment on "The Lovers’ Chronicle 24 August – prayers – art by Lavinia Fontana – verse by John Taylor, Robert Herrick & Jorge Luis Borges"
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