Regardless, enjoy this! I enjoyed writing it, and did so in the voice of braggart Mercutio to some effect. See you tomorrow at eight AM, and have yourself a lovely day.
Flight of Larks by Mackinley Clevinger, April 28, 2016
Again the larks fly and abound in their games
Hark and meet, to hear their cries
Jesters and villains the lot of them
One to be crowned by a hand like my own
To hold one down for but a moment
And pull some grain of truth past their silver tongues
Would be a feat befitting I, but alas
No gilded form nor honored blood am I blessed
And as the hounds I watch the larks flit about
Such arms as mine fit not to fly, no
Instead to fall prostrate before such wings as theirs
And perhaps, if luck should befall, a gift would land
The refuse of larks the deserved thing on my hand
If gifts received are gifts undeserved
Then a gift of my own returned is in store
If a simple cut would tell me all
Then come, and I shall bring the knife
Let blood run with blood, and if claims are true
Make sport of the violet hues to be shown
Prove to me now your worth as man
Speak thus and hold me in your thrall
Let arrows fly and pierce the veil on my heart
But, alas, the larks’ cry shan’t strike true
For I am not of the open hostel doors, nay
Far more the traps of venus-fly I say
If hound I be to the flight of larks
Then let kingdoms be separate, and I left to the dogs
That I should mar the choral form to say the skies be banned?
Strike me down, for fools in thought ought be fools buried
Yet that larks cry down for favors from sordid thrones
As Jupiter descending expects my prayer
Lest scorched earth remain would you not bow your head
For we are but playthings to the aged divine
Doth the lark wish the hound to see fair Aphrodite, then
In the interest of the ground and our tired knees at their flight?
Nay, for eyes be eyes if they rest in hound and lark alike
Neither accustomed to such sweet ambrosia, nor in the divine unmaking of men
I would better gaze upon the spinning coin than listen to such cries as theirs
And howsoever that may fall, to there I ought flock
Of one house or another, to me they are the same