Shakespeare, Pt. 3
Feb. 27th, 2007 03:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
itsallovernowETA: Because I left three paragraphs off the Heroes drabble. Argh.
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redstarrobot gave:
"Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war",
Farscape (to make it a challenge, no humans involved)
I disregarded the challenge, and then challenged myself in turn. It's not... true iambic pentameter (but it is the right meter and foot). IP is HARD without rhyme or dialogue!! (Also, LJ won't let me justify the break in the meter to the right (so the iambs and the pentas add up to 10 in 2 different lines). Just pretend it's reading like real verse.
Season 2. Pre-DMD.
Gun in hand, in place, back straight, eyes front. Breathe.
This isn't war, D'Argo says, but he's false
False friend, (unfair), false hope, and her mind rhymes
A child in the crèche, and John giggling at poems
Of soldiers when she tries to soothe:
Cartridge
Sight Trigger Grip Safety.
But they're not safe
He's not safe with madness riding slipstream
In his irises, rougher than combat
He's seeing Scorpius, she says to D'Argo
Frustration hard and bloody in her throat
He wants to die.
Perhaps we should allow
No. That's not
If it were you
It's not.
You'd ask for swift mercy.
That is the end of the discussion.
Later, she finds Chiana with him, head
Cradled in her lap.
Sleep? Does he… dream?
The girl shakes her head, too vigorous
He wakes, eyes on her, on nothing. Blinks. Sighs.
Sweat damp temples, shifting like time like…
Babe?
Ignores his plea, looks at Chiana.
He's not safe.
What's safe? Her hands stay
On his forehead, his arm, as he sits up
Go, he says, and gives away his smile like
Currency.
Won't leave you alone, mumbled.
Not alone, he says, looking at her.
No.
I'll stay.
Promises, promises, he singsongs.
Jack and Jill went up the hill
And tumbled.
She remembers.
We all fall down, Aeryn.
I'll teach you my rhymes.
Sun, Gun, Fun?
I do not want them in a box, I do
Not want them from a fox. Or in Socks.
Chiana slips out as they look at each other
There on the floor.
You should be clean.
He nods and she strips him of his bearings
His clothes in a pile on the floor, then water
Hot against his skin, diffused against her.
He leans against her, hands hot, desperate.
This is my gun, she thinks. This is my war.
***
lizlet gave me:
Life is as tedious as twice-told tale, vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.
But what she really wanted was Heroes, and Claude. And punching.
Vague, vague spoiler for 1x17.
In 1977, when Claude gets into his first fight, fists against Gilby Everrett's jaw in those days when he was invisible only to his family, but not to the world, he learned that blood is bright and hot and thick and that teeth leave scars on the back of knuckles.
Learning that Gilby Everett was a biter was not the least important thing Claude learned that year, a month before he saw his flesh start to shimmer and waver and go faint like gossamer and moths against bright sodium lights.
Stay clear of teeth became a rule of thumb, especially those bright wolfish teeth that grin up at him from the face of the man in the no name company who offers him a job that is more like a prison.
Eventually, he also learns to steer clear of people who call themselves friend. There's no such thing, just people who find you more useful than less, until they don't anymore.
Claude shed idealism like he did visibility and moves effortlessly throughout the stinking crowds, never looking back.
He takes from people, but never from dogs or children, remembers the lesson of sharp 8 year old incisors.
The more time he spends among people, among the unsuspecting, the more he learns that Bennett, that his father, his brothers, that his wretched excuse for a town – that none of them are anomalous. In 1999, he sits in a movie theater in Bristol, watching The Matrix and thinking that Agent Smith had gotten it so, so right. But the sequels make him so angry that he sabotages the projector in the tiny, smoke filled theater in Amsterdam, leaving it full of angry, puzzled, supremely stoned Germans and Canadians. If he hadn't been so angry, he'd have started a riot, but the pablum at the end of Matrix: Revolutions had left him bitter beyond the joys of the punch.
By that point, he'd come to look upon fighting as an art form. Dodge, hook, step, thrust – a dance a little like rough sex and a little like bad art. Thrust, parry, jab, jab and sometimes he even does it straight, with all his limbs visible, all his own soft flesh available for bruising.
If you steer clear of the jaw, if you drink enough beer, and insult enough mothers and manhoods, you can usually make a fight last for whole minutes. When you strike straight to the solar plexus, it's contact you can feel all the way up your arm, all the way down through your body, through your cock, enough feeling to wake up and shake up and make up even an invisible man.
It's a good life – post death. Fighting and forging and fencing and occasionally, very occasionally, fucking because he tends to go really invisible when he gets horny and there aren’t all that many blind girls out for a rollicking night on the town.
It's 2006 when he starts to feel the shift in the air, when he hears rumors about … more. More people. New talents. Things wild and unexplained and uncontrolled. He's curious, unashamed to admit that. He's still got contacts in the underground even if they greet him more often with guns than with grins. But there's a scent, of war maybe, or change in the air, and the freaks ban together when a threat is made. He hears more rumors still – about murder and theft, bloody, brutal deaths that leave even Claude bone cold.
The first time he hears a rumor about the boy who could fly ( a rumor that he knows for truth, has seen it in action when the boy truly was a boy), he's drinking ale in a crappy fake-British tavern on Manhattan's lower east side. He grows so giddy that he calls his nearest neighbor a rat bastard panty sniffing commie (for a boy raised in the 70's, it's hard to let go of cold war insults). The man is drunk enough to take offense, and Claude gets in a lovely, lovely roundhouse to the fellow's ear before he's head-butted into the nearest booth and fades from sight.
***
Three more to go!!!
And happiest of happy birthdays to everyone I've forgotten, and particularly tojenlev who always, always makes the world a brighter place.
Oh, also, while I have literally nothing coherent to say, Heroes last night just rocked, graduating all the way from popcorn show to something beautiful.
redstarrobot gave:"Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war",
Farscape (to make it a challenge, no humans involved)
I disregarded the challenge, and then challenged myself in turn. It's not... true iambic pentameter (but it is the right meter and foot). IP is HARD without rhyme or dialogue!! (Also, LJ won't let me justify the break in the meter to the right (so the iambs and the pentas add up to 10 in 2 different lines). Just pretend it's reading like real verse.
Season 2. Pre-DMD.
Gun in hand, in place, back straight, eyes front. Breathe.
This isn't war, D'Argo says, but he's false
False friend, (unfair), false hope, and her mind rhymes
A child in the crèche, and John giggling at poems
Of soldiers when she tries to soothe:
Cartridge
Sight Trigger Grip Safety.
But they're not safe
He's not safe with madness riding slipstream
In his irises, rougher than combat
He's seeing Scorpius, she says to D'Argo
Frustration hard and bloody in her throat
He wants to die.
Perhaps we should allow
No. That's not
If it were you
It's not.
You'd ask for swift mercy.
That is the end of the discussion.
Later, she finds Chiana with him, head
Cradled in her lap.
Sleep? Does he… dream?
The girl shakes her head, too vigorous
He wakes, eyes on her, on nothing. Blinks. Sighs.
Sweat damp temples, shifting like time like…
Babe?
Ignores his plea, looks at Chiana.
He's not safe.
What's safe? Her hands stay
On his forehead, his arm, as he sits up
Go, he says, and gives away his smile like
Currency.
Won't leave you alone, mumbled.
Not alone, he says, looking at her.
No.
I'll stay.
Promises, promises, he singsongs.
Jack and Jill went up the hill
And tumbled.
She remembers.
We all fall down, Aeryn.
I'll teach you my rhymes.
Sun, Gun, Fun?
I do not want them in a box, I do
Not want them from a fox. Or in Socks.
Chiana slips out as they look at each other
There on the floor.
You should be clean.
He nods and she strips him of his bearings
His clothes in a pile on the floor, then water
Hot against his skin, diffused against her.
He leans against her, hands hot, desperate.
This is my gun, she thinks. This is my war.
***
lizlet gave me: Life is as tedious as twice-told tale, vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.
But what she really wanted was Heroes, and Claude. And punching.
Vague, vague spoiler for 1x17.
In 1977, when Claude gets into his first fight, fists against Gilby Everrett's jaw in those days when he was invisible only to his family, but not to the world, he learned that blood is bright and hot and thick and that teeth leave scars on the back of knuckles.
Learning that Gilby Everett was a biter was not the least important thing Claude learned that year, a month before he saw his flesh start to shimmer and waver and go faint like gossamer and moths against bright sodium lights.
Stay clear of teeth became a rule of thumb, especially those bright wolfish teeth that grin up at him from the face of the man in the no name company who offers him a job that is more like a prison.
Eventually, he also learns to steer clear of people who call themselves friend. There's no such thing, just people who find you more useful than less, until they don't anymore.
Claude shed idealism like he did visibility and moves effortlessly throughout the stinking crowds, never looking back.
He takes from people, but never from dogs or children, remembers the lesson of sharp 8 year old incisors.
The more time he spends among people, among the unsuspecting, the more he learns that Bennett, that his father, his brothers, that his wretched excuse for a town – that none of them are anomalous. In 1999, he sits in a movie theater in Bristol, watching The Matrix and thinking that Agent Smith had gotten it so, so right. But the sequels make him so angry that he sabotages the projector in the tiny, smoke filled theater in Amsterdam, leaving it full of angry, puzzled, supremely stoned Germans and Canadians. If he hadn't been so angry, he'd have started a riot, but the pablum at the end of Matrix: Revolutions had left him bitter beyond the joys of the punch.
By that point, he'd come to look upon fighting as an art form. Dodge, hook, step, thrust – a dance a little like rough sex and a little like bad art. Thrust, parry, jab, jab and sometimes he even does it straight, with all his limbs visible, all his own soft flesh available for bruising.
If you steer clear of the jaw, if you drink enough beer, and insult enough mothers and manhoods, you can usually make a fight last for whole minutes. When you strike straight to the solar plexus, it's contact you can feel all the way up your arm, all the way down through your body, through your cock, enough feeling to wake up and shake up and make up even an invisible man.
It's a good life – post death. Fighting and forging and fencing and occasionally, very occasionally, fucking because he tends to go really invisible when he gets horny and there aren’t all that many blind girls out for a rollicking night on the town.
It's 2006 when he starts to feel the shift in the air, when he hears rumors about … more. More people. New talents. Things wild and unexplained and uncontrolled. He's curious, unashamed to admit that. He's still got contacts in the underground even if they greet him more often with guns than with grins. But there's a scent, of war maybe, or change in the air, and the freaks ban together when a threat is made. He hears more rumors still – about murder and theft, bloody, brutal deaths that leave even Claude bone cold.
The first time he hears a rumor about the boy who could fly ( a rumor that he knows for truth, has seen it in action when the boy truly was a boy), he's drinking ale in a crappy fake-British tavern on Manhattan's lower east side. He grows so giddy that he calls his nearest neighbor a rat bastard panty sniffing commie (for a boy raised in the 70's, it's hard to let go of cold war insults). The man is drunk enough to take offense, and Claude gets in a lovely, lovely roundhouse to the fellow's ear before he's head-butted into the nearest booth and fades from sight.
***
Three more to go!!!
And happiest of happy birthdays to everyone I've forgotten, and particularly to
jenlev who always, always makes the world a brighter place.Oh, also, while I have literally nothing coherent to say, Heroes last night just rocked, graduating all the way from popcorn show to something beautiful.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-02-27 11:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-28 12:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-28 09:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-28 05:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-28 12:16 am (UTC)as for heroes...holy bat dren. when i saw...well, you know who...i just about fell off the couch. wow. and oh the ending, just gorgeous and moving and so well acted and filmed.
:::hugs:::
no subject
Date: 2007-02-28 12:21 am (UTC)He's not safe with madness riding slipstream
In his irises, rougher than combat
You should be clean.
He nods and she strips him of his bearings
Guh. ::pets the beautiful imagery::
no subject
Date: 2007-02-28 12:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-28 12:38 am (UTC)randomly (well, not really, since these were shakespearean prompts and all)... S&A made me go and dig out my 1927 hardbound edition of Ten Plays of Shakespeare - complete with margin notes written by my mother from her school days. *sigh*
i've never read Lear before, and i'm finally on my second round of season 3 and want to be more familiar with the text.
god, i'm a geek. *facepalm*
no subject
Date: 2007-02-28 12:43 am (UTC)And then you'll watch S3 again, and you'll cry some more.
And then when you read it again, you'll forgive him.
Hugs Starsy.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-28 03:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-28 03:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-28 03:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-28 09:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-28 05:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-28 07:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-28 07:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-28 07:13 pm (UTC)