Free Cheeseballs And Vodka In One Easy Step

This is different for me–usually I talk about back hickeys and singing Bette Midler in public.

But sometimes I see something pretty or quiet.  And I really want to put it here, but I don’t, for fear of becoming a colossal bore.

Well TA-DA! Every once in a while I’m going to get colossally boring on your arse.  You can skip those times.  Or memorize them so you have a few weird poetry bombs to drop at cocktail parties.

Imagine this: You’re at a party and some creepy dudes are talking your ear off about the European debt crisis.  And then BLAMMO!  You drop some Irish poetry on those jokers.  And in the confusion that follows, you grab (1) the cheese ball and (2) a bottle of vodka.  And you sneak out the front door.

In this example, one poem gets you a week’s supply of cheese and booze. That’s, like, $40-worth of stuff.  The people who say you can’t make a living off poetry are crazy.

I’ll be back soon with the cheddar cheese sauce Scott made last night.  He doesn’t remember what he did.  First he told me “3 cups of flour.”  Then he said it was 3 tablespoons of flour.  So until I figure out what the hell is going on here, you might have to melt that cheese ball down until it looks like sauce.

~~~

From “Lightenings,” by Seamus Heaney

VI

Once, as a child, out in a field of sheep,

Thomas Hardy pretended to be dead

And lay down flat among their dainty shins.

In that sniffed-at, bleated-into grassy space

He experimented with infinity.

His small cool brow was like an anvil waiting

For sky to make it sing the perfect pitch

Of his dumb being, and that stir he caused

In the fleece-hustle was the original

Of a ripple that would travel eighty years

Outward from there, to be the same ripple

Inside him at its last circumference.