~The Dragon Flies' Lair~Poetry Thread XXV~

The Seven Muses | March 8, 2006 | bentfeather/Poets of the Lair

[Soaring Feather]

LOL


A horse is a horse
of course, unless
he is a mule
they all smell funny
with a full tummy

and the long afternoon
sun in their eye.

[Lady Jag]

A Drinking Song
by William Butler Yeats

WINE comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.

[Lady Jag]

There was and still is some disagreement about his health and what killed him may have been more innocent than originally believed. Forgetting now, I think they suspected diabetes or some such ailment.

[Soaring Feather]

Well, from what I've read he was pretty found of alcohol, that could have been a reason for his depression. Drunk is down. Once down, a drink is needed to be up. It never works like one thinks it ought. A vicious cycle is then taught, round and round it goes adding to the woes.

[uncleshag]

Elmer and Gantry.
Mules I have known.
Left eye to right eye.
Corn row after corn row.
Time after turn after 'tween.
Thirsty, hot, dusty, smelly, mules.
Oh, thirteen hundred endless, mindless
Acres of red clay dirt, clod begats clod
'Til the broken sod yields and awaits showers.
On a dry, warm Spring day with Elmer, Gantry and me.

-unc.© 2006

[Soaring Feather]

WoW I love that poem.

[uncleshag]

Hey Lj!

I look at you, and I sigh.

It's ok, sigh loudly.
I hear it all the time.
Might even say I have grown
fond of the hearing, though dimmed.

Yep, powerful addiction
that thing
is.

[uncleshag]

You.
Inspire.
Thanks.

[fatima]

I am so liking her and her beer prayer.
Prayer of St Brigid :)

"I would like the angels of Heaven to be among us. I would like an abundance of peace. I would like full vessels of charity. I would like rich treasures of mercy. I would like cheerfulness to preside over all. I would like Jesus to be present. I would like the three Marys of illustrious renown to be with us. I would like the friends of Heaven to be gathered around us from all parts. I would like myself to be a rent payer to the Lord; that I should suffer distress, that he would bestow a good blessing upon me. I would like a great lake of beer for the King of Kings. I would like to be watching Heaven's family drinking it through all eternity".

Saint Brigid

[Soaring Feather]

Spanish Guitars~Santana & Ottomar Liebert~Obsession Confession

[blackie]

Mornin' Ms Feather!

[blackie]

Good stuff ~ thanks!

[Soaring Feather]

Roses in a vase
for fatima, full of grace
and in her prayerful ways
may her days be filled with sun
and a dozen dewy roses every day.

bentfeather (c)

[Soaring Feather]

Thanks, I love those Spanish Guitars. WOO HOO!

[Lady Jag]

There were many theories as to what killed him. The Dr. who signed his death cert. said the cause was brain tremors and there was never an autopsy.

Two popular and credible theories are rabies and murder....

Natural Causes

Poe drank himself to death.   All who knew him knew that he had a serious problem with alcohol.  He had once been jailed for public drunkenness.  Although he could go for long stretches without touching a drop, he also, as the Baltimore Poe Society states, "engaged in bouts of drinking, particularly during Virginia's long illness." Author Charles Bonner found an entry from the diary of one of Poe's   contemporaries that stated: "Edgar A. Poe died in town here at the hospital from the effects of a debauch.   - some companion here seduced him to the bottle - [and] the consequence was fever, delirium, and madness, and in a few days a termination of his sad career in the hospital." Dr. Moran, the doctor who attended Poe at his deathbed, wrote a letter to Maria Clemm that obviously presumed that Maria would already know that Poe had drank himself to death: "Presuming you are already aware of the malady of which Mr. Poe died, I need only state concisely the particulars of his circumstances from his entrance until his decease. When brought to the hospital, he was unconscious of his condition—who brought him or with whom he had been associating. He remained in this condition from 5:00 in the afternoon—the hour of his admission—until 3:00 [the] next morning.  This was on 3 October. To this state succeeded tremor of the limbs, and at first a busy, but not violent or active delirium—constantly talking—and vacant converse with spectral and imaginary objects on the walls. His face was pale and his whole person drenched in perspiration. We were unable to induce tranquility before the second day after his admission. Having left orders with the nurses to that effect, I was summoned to his bedside as soon as consciousness supervened, and questioned him in reference to his family, place of residence, relatives, etc. But his answers were incoherent and unsatisfactory.   He told me, however, he had a wife in Richmond [a reference, most probably, to Elmira Shelton, and not Virginia Poe], which I have since learned was not the fact, that he did not know when he left that city or what had become of his trunk or clothing." Dr. Moran didn't mention to Maria Clemm Poe's cryptically calling out for "Reynolds" on his death-bed.   Nobody has ever determined who "Reynolds" was. Regarding the trunk mentioned in Dr. Moran's letter, John Evangelist Walsh, in his book Midnight Dreary - The Mysterious Death of Edgar Allen Poe, reports that the trunk was later recovered from a local hotel. But it revealed    nothing about Poe's activities during his last days. The fact that Poe had apparently checked the trunk at a Baltimore hotel deepens the mystery: if Baltimore was merely the place Poe was going to catch a train, why and when did he leave his luggage at a local hotel? Edgar Allan Poe, portrait   Dr. Moran's reference to Poe's clothes brings up yet another puzzle: the clothes he was wearing when found by Joseph Walker were later described by Dr. Snodgrass as: "His hat—or, rather, the hat of somebody else, for he had evidently been robbed of his clothing, or cheated in an exchange—was a cheap palm-leaf one, without a band, and soiled. His coat, [was] of commonest alpaca, and evidently second-hand, and his pants of gray, mixed, cassimere [was] dingy and badly fitting.   His shirt was sadly crumpled and soiled." These were not the clothes that Poe had worn from Richmond. Most people presumed that while on a final drinking binge Poe had either sold his own clothes for more liquor, exchanged his own clothes for somebody else's for some reason, or, as Snodgrass theorizes, he had been "robbed of his clothing." The Baltimore Poe Society also cites a variety of references that indicate Poe may have died from complications of some illness.   During the summer of 1849 Poe had written to Maria Clemm that he was: "so ill—have had the cholera, or spasms quite as bad, and can now barely hold the pen. It is no use to reason with me now -- I must die. For your sake it would be sweet to live, but we must die together. You have been all in all to me, darling, ever beloved mother, and dearest, truest friend." Additionally, a nurse who attended Virginia Poe in her final illness stated that she believed Poe had some kind of brain disease. John Miller in his book Building Poe Biography published a letter from the same nurse saying "I have seen the scar of the wound in the left shoulder - I asked [Poe] if he had been hurt - in the region of the heart and he told me yes - [and] his head was also hurt." Later scholars and Poe enthusiasts would point to these illnesses (in 1996, a physician even claimed some of Poe's recorded symptoms at his death indicated rabies) as the cause of Poe's death, or have theorized that a weakened state of health from these diseases, in combination with drinking, could have easily caused death in someone as fragile as Poe was in the autumn of 1849. The change in Poe's clothing, however, soon led to the formation of a more sinister theory that Poe had not died accidentally, but had been killed.

 

[pelikan]

Ahhhh....

Fingers teasing strings slowly, casually at first,
Gradually becoming more frenetic, more insistent.
Fluttering like butterflies in flight
My skirts come alive, a whirlpool of colors,
Lost in the exhilaration of freedom.
And the fingers continue teasing the strings
While I continue dancing
Lost in thoughts of other places, other times.
~peli~

[blackie]

WooHoo!

[Soaring Feather]

Interesting stuff on Poe. Thanks Lady.







And now I'm gonna bake Banana Bread. Yummy.

[Soaring Feather]

Wonderful dance, me Lady Peli!!

Fabulous graphic.

[Soaring Feather]