Dark songs

Every Silver Ling Has a Cloud

When you're about to embark on a spree
When your troubles and ills you cannot see
When life is good as good can be
Take it from me:
Every silver lining has a cloud.

Just in case a stroke of fortune makes you proud
I'm happy for you and you're certainly allowed
To go off and celebrate your lucky break
But cross your fingers as you gobble up your steak:
Every silver lining has a cloud.

You should have asked for steak cooked well past rare
As Fortune's fickle and she's never on the square
She finds your celebration vain--it's folly
To think that you could leave without e-coli:
Every silver lining has a cloud.

Then when you think that you have found your fair one
The golden girl or boy who's sure to make your life fun
The one--your prince or princess regent
You're going to find your love is surely night's dark agent:
Every silver lining has a cloud.

So to mend your broken heart you book a cruise
A shipboard fling is just what you could use
And then when you meet the perfect fling
You find your fling is night's dark second string:
Every silver lining has a cloud

When you're about to embark on a spree
When your troubles and ills you cannot see
When life is good as good can be
Take it from me:
Every silver lining has a cloud.





For Bill O'Reilly


Dear let's falafel
It's not so awful
Let's falafel
It's all the rage.

O love, let's loofah
I want to smooch ya
I said let's loofah
And love we'll wage.

My dear let's falafel
You'll take a mouthful
I like your craw full
For days and days.

You see this loofah
It'll hoochy cooch ya
You can use this loofah
In lots of ways.

Let's put my loofah
In your falafel
It's sure to move ya
To the next phase.

Dear let's falafel
It's far from awful
Let's falafel
It's all the rage.

St. George and the Church

Saint of the Day lists today - 23 April - as Saint George's day, then goes on to explain that he has been the object of overhype, as it were. So

Saint George ain't official Church dogma
But quaint theological fog, Pa
Did he slay a green dragon?
Pull Christ in a wagon?
Maybe not but he's not to be mockeda.

Aphorism:
It is easy for a rich man to buy Cleopatra's needle.

April Fool Saint

The Church would never canonize Erasmus (I think they have one of their own--but not the Erasmus of "In Praise of Folly"). The Saint of the Day site lists Saint Hugh of Grenoble. Therefore I offer:


Prayer for April 1st, the Feast Day of Saint Hugh of Grenoble (1052-1182).


We turn to you, Saint Hugh
Please give us our due.
Don't let us turn blue
But stay our same hue,
Could you manage, too,
To give us a clue,
When sin's wages come due,
And we'll scramble anew,
Away from the few
Who are saved there with you.

Amen

Supermarket Haiku

I linger in the produce aisle
Bane of those who would eat tomatoes.

Ferraro's vulgarity

Geraldine Ferraro's comments re Obam are breathtaking in their vulgarity and mean-spiritedness. Hillary Clinton's measured response seems patronizing and insincere. If this strategy backfires, as one hopes, perhaps Clinton and Ferraro can get together and have a good cry.

Saint Sebastian's Day

Saint Sebastian was already listed as a martyr by 350CE. As most of us know, he was filled full of arrows, survived to taunt the emperor, and finally beaten to death. I'm sure he was perfectly horrid to be around and that his martyrdom came as a relief to all who knew him.

What a card, eh? A note of interest. The Saint Sebastian convent and parish house in Venice is no longer used for the church. Its major wall is used by the students at the University of Venice to post their pornographic caricatures of and bawdy poems about one another. One of them, when I was there, had a gorgeous comparative lit MA graduate drawing with her breasts talking post-modern theory with one another. Another one pictured a male philosopher sitting on the toilet looking at a girlie mag as his erect penis (with a face) asked the"philosophical" questions: "Is there an ontological point to all this? Do I have a place in the scheme of things?"---and so on. There were many other drawings, and obscene rants and poems along this line. They were all sublime. I wanted to enroll in school there at once

But the most damning one was a very straightforward drawing of a serious young man. All it said was, "Vittorio has always been the joy of his mother and the priests." That was it! The most saintly of those Venetian students was plastered there on the side of Saint Sebastian's as a truly pathetic figure. Saint Sebastian must be very proud. Perhaps he'll send an arrow to Vittorio. We can be sure Vittorio will be more than happy to use it on sinners. And his mother,the priests, and Saint Sebastian will all be proud.

Need I say that Venice is my kind of place?