Photo credit: “F11v-aberdeen-best-detail” by Unknown – The Aberdeen Bestiary project [1]. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:F11v-aberdeen-best-detail.jpg#/media/File:F11v-aberdeen-best-detail.jpg.
“The Second Coming,”
by W.B. Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Photo credit: Icon of Second Coming, circa 1700, Greece. Christ is enthroned in the center surrounded by the angels and saints, Paradise is at the bottom, with the Bosom of Abraham (left) and the Good Thief (right) holding his cross. The creator is anonymous, the source here is Wikimedia Commons.
You people need to read “Spending and Saving” by poet Dennis Villelmi, recently published by Dead Snakes. I swear it’s the best poem I’ve read in a long time.
Damn, I wish I could write like this.
Click here for the link to Dead Snakes:
“Spending and Saving,” by Dennis Villelmi
Photo credit: “Greek Silver Stater of Phaistos (Crete), Depictions of Herakles in Greek Numismatics” by Ancient Art – Flickr: A Rare and Magnificent Greek Silver Stater of Phaistos (Crete), Among the Finest Depictions of Herakles in Greek Numismatics. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
It’s a damn quotable show. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would be proud.
And that Cumberbatch guy is a damn fine actor.
I have no idea which original story the title of “The Abominable Bride” is parodying.
The Fall of Rome
by W.H. Auden
The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.
Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
Agents of the Fisc pursue
Absconding tax-defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns.
Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend.
Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extol the Ancient Disciplines,
But the muscle-bound Marines
Mutiny for food and pay.
Caesar’s double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.
Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.
Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.
Photo credit: By Ben Salter from Wales (…and didn’t it rain!!)
Here are a few more pictures from my fellow Longwood High School Alumnus, James Dentel.
James is an outstanding events and fashion photographer. Check out his Facebook page here: Photos by JD. (Many of them are easy on they eyes, guys.) The photos are below are just shots taken on his way to work, but James tells me that it’s funny how people really respond to them. (I don’t know why I dig them so much, but I do.)
Any New Yorker will know that most of these are of the George Washington Bridge (or “the GW.”) The exception is the photo second to last — that’s the Verrazanno-Narrows Bridge, one that I myself have traversed too many times to count.
Click to enlarge.
Thanks to Philippe Atherton-Blenkiron for sharing this poem by Warsan Shire.
I found this on Facebook; it was just too good not to share. That maple leaf representing Wolverine’s Canadian heritage is an especially nice touch. I am unaware of the (actual) artist.
When I was 10 years old, I would argue at length with the kid next door about who would win in a fight — Wolverine or Silver Surfer.
Sigh … okay, I was actually 20 years old, and a college junior, and I was arguing in Mary Washington College’s New Hall with senior John Mathias.
“But he has the Power Cosmic!” John endlessly asserted about Silver Surfer.
If Wolverine’s adamantium claws could cut through anything, I astutely countered, “then they could cut through the Power Cosmic!” Then I took another swig of my beer.
I had a well rounded education.
Sur la photo, “Nicole,” une Partisan Française qui a capturé 25 Nazis dans la région de Chartres dans le Août 1944.
“Nicole,” of the French Resistance
Pictured is “Nicole,” a French Partisan who captured 25 Nazis in the Chartres area in the August of 1944.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 
