Beige... I think I'll Paint the Ceiling Beige.

Celebrating Our American Heritage!

For a Fool
On earth the wise man makes the rules,
And is the fool's advisor,
But here the wise are as the fools,
(And no man is the wiser).

For One Who Gaily Sowed His Oats
My days were a thing for me to live,
For others to deplore;
I took of life all it could give;
Rind, inner fruit, and core.

For a Wanton
To men no more than so much cover
For them to doff or try,
I find in death a constant lover;
Here in his arms I lie.

For a Preacher
Vanity of vanities,
All us vanity; yea,
Even the rod He flayed you with
Crumbled and turned to clay.

Countee Cullen, "Epitaphs"

To Rusty Bloggers...

Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures under ground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.

Daffodil bulbs instead of balls
Stared from the sockets of the eyes!
He knew that thought clings round dead limbs
Tightening its lusts and luxuries.

Donne, I suppose, was such another
Who found no substitute for sense,
To seize and clutch and penetrate;
Expert beyond experience,

He knew the anguish of the marrow
The ague of the skeleton;
No contact possible to flesh
Allayed the fever of the bone.

. . . . .

Grishkin is nice: her Russian eye
Is underlined for emphasis;
Uncorseted, her friendly bust
Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.

The couched Brazilian jaguar
Compels the scampering marmoset
With subtle effluence of cat;
Grishkin has a maisonette;

The sleek Brazilian jaguar
Does not in its arboreal gloom
Distil so rank a feline smell
As Grishkin in a drawing-room.

And even the Abstract Entities
Circumambulate her charm;
But our lot crawls between dry ribs
To keep our metaphysics warm.

T.S. Eliot, "Whispers of Immortality"