Friday, July 09, 2004

beautiful things, recently:

neko case's cover of "christmas card from a hooker in minneapolis" (originally tom waits. of course.)

i used to like things like that (explodingdog)

grafitti i saw in a parking garage; a white post, with a small black spatter of paint on it, and in the center of the paint, an old school printed computer label which read "the angels were astronauts"

and a poem:

Get Drunk!

One should always be drunk. That's all that matters;
that's our one imperative need. So as not to feel Time's
horrible burden one which breaks your shoulders and bows
you down, you must get drunk without cease.

But with what?
With wine, poetry, or virtue
as you choose.
But get drunk.

And if, at some time, on steps of a palace,
in the green grass of a ditch,
in the bleak solitude of your room,
you are waking and the drunkenness has already abated,
ask the wind, the wave, the stars, the clock,
all that which flees,
all that which groans,
all that which rolls,
all that which sings,
all that which speaks,
ask them, what time it is;
and the wind, the wave, the stars, the birds, and
the clock,
they will all reply:

"It is time to get drunk!

So that you may not be the martyred slaves of Time,
get drunk, get drunk,
and never pause for rest!
With wine, poetry, or virtue,
as you choose!"

- Charles-Pierre Baudelaire, "Be you drunken ceaselessly"

2 Comments:

Blogger N said...

I love that poem! I knew it as a kid.

8:31 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I can't believe you posted that prose-poem.
I love it and am glad there are others out there in blogland who know.
Excuse me now, I've got to get another beer.
-- Endless

10:52 PM  

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