down with flu

Yesterday
i'd resolved to finish the poem: your mouth
a swollen ripe pomegranate, the recoil
of your nipples on my tongue, the thick
grassy smell that fogs over your skin. each line
a metaphorically chosen rhyme
to tell you i burn, even
when i am not with you.

Today
i am teary, (and not
from falling in your eyes) - i have
a fever, and all i want is to
set my muzzle on your thighs like
a lovelorn dog. you noticed i could write?
i have gained a yearning that is stronger.

This Above All

Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg’d comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel but, being in,
Bear't that th' opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgement.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man;
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower, nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

- William Shakespeare (extracted from Hamlet)