Halt, Dynamos by Dylan Thomas
Do not work harder than required to work,
Young men should sit around and drink all day;
Laze, laze, ignore the pressure not to shirk.
Though poor men may apply to be a clerk,
Because their jobs are not exciting they
Do not work harder than required to work.
Rich men, who sell and buy, eat at Le Cirque,
And take their "business trips" to Saint-Tropez,
Laze, laze, ignore the pressure not to shirk.
Old men around retirement age who lurk
At desks and hope no tasks will come their way
Do not work harder than required to work.
Smart men, in school, who learn with blinding smirk
That coasting through a class still earns an A,
Laze, laze, ignore the pressure not to shirk.
Don't visit every world like Captain Kirk;
Picard knows that the bridge is where to stay.
Do not work harder than required to work.
Laze, laze, ignore the pressure not to shirk.
Is a Sperm Like a Whale?
by William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a sperm whale, sperm?
Thou art more tiny and more resolute:
Rough tides may sway a sea-bound endotherm,
But naught diverts thy uterine commute.
Sometime too fierce the eye of squid may glint
And make a stout cetacean hunter quail;
Methinks 'twould take much more than bilious squint
To shake thee off the cunning ovum's trail.
Yet still thou art not so unlike, thou two,
Both coursing through a dark uncharted brine
While fore and aft there swims thy fellow crew;
And note this echo, little gamete mine:
As whales spray salty water from their spout,
So with a salty spray dost thou come out.
Skinny Domicile
By Emily Dickinson
I have a skinny Domicile—
Its Door is very narrow.
'Twill keep—I hope—the Reaper out—
His Scythe—and Bones—and Marrow.
Since Death is not a portly Chap,
The Entrance must be thin—
So—when my Final Moment comes—
He cannot wriggle in.
That's why I don't go out that much—
I can't fit through that Portal.
How dumb—to waste my Social Life
On Plans to be—immortal—
The links:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four, which I don't like so well
And a screenplay on the same theme, just 'cause: Drama, Part One.
