My eye-opening, yet saddening NYC 9/11 Memorial Experience

Day #20: Poetry Day

"Today everyone is to send in a line to create the world's longest poem. They will be collated as they are emailed to www.thiswebsitewillchangeyourlife.com, and the result will be published across the whole wide world as soon as a suitable final line is deemed to have been found and we think of a good title. The opening line is:

'Mercy, cried the popinjay to pope'"

I was in the bagel shop this morning crunching on an "onion bagel, lightly toasted with low fat scallion cream cheese, tomato, and cucumber" (sounds like how most people order Starbucks), when I came across an article in the New York Post. Scientists have compiled a 3D digital rendition of Shakespeare's face from the remains of his death mask, a chilling tradition that I imagine to be something like the papier mache masks of your youth, only I'm sure Shakespeare was too sophisticated for the nasally inserted bendy straw breathing apparatus. The photo that resulted, however, was wholly unflattering as the records show that his death was the result of cancer. Perhaps cannabis was prescribed in those days as well because his eyelids appear droopy and complacent. His facial hair resembles something between a redneck and a hipster: a monstrous and no doubt ironic mustache and a soul patch as long as the 18th fairway.

Don't get me wrong. I mean no disrespect. Shakespeare's fan base rivals that of Elvis; and no doubt there is some crossover between the groups. In fact, I am a bard myself, although no amount of prying, cajoling, or hacking will tempt me to produce my mid-adolescent ballads. They were written in response to "loves that would last a lifetime" and "mommy dearests" and every other cliched teenage woe imaginable. In all seriousness though, I eked out a decent couple of years of therapy through poetry. In retrospect, they're way more interesting than my high school journals: "OMG this boy from Jesuit asked me to homecoming using a gum wrapper and those little tropical drink umbrellas! Hearts!"

So in salute to my era of poetry and to the original balladeer himself, let me leave you with a line crafted in classic iambic pentameter:

"His chortle left an ink blot in the hay."

Put that in your death mask and smoke it..