Strong Verbs Are Just Better

Greetings, traveller! Welcome to Highly's House of Batshittery. Here you will find musings, rantings, sniggerings and occasional coherent thoughts on life, friends, medievalism, the Internet, and Being Educated in Australia. Oh, and cleaning. I tend to talk about cooking and cleaning a lot.

If you're looking for my Serious Medieval Stuff, I'm keeping a proper medieval blog over at The Naked Philologist. It's like the Naked Chef, only with more language jokes and less chance of embarrassing burns.


There's now a tag cloud on the left hand side for those who wish to cherry-pick their Highly content.

I have told so many tales and fabliaux
Which I have found, old and new,
That I have not finished for the past two years;
By the faith that I owe Saint John
I don't believe that I will compose another,
Except this -- of Bèrenger of the Long Arse.
You have never heard it before,
And, upon my soul, I shall tell it now;
I don't intend to be slow nor long.
Hear what Guèrin would relate
Of what happened in Lombardy
(Where people are not very brave),
Of a knight who had taken as a wife,
As I have heard, a noble lady,
Daughter of a rich nobleman,
Whereas he was the son of a churl,
Of a rich and prosperous usurer
Who had plenty of wine and grain;
Sheep and cattle and coins
He had by bushels and barrels;
And the nobleman owed him
So much that he could not pay,
And so he gave his daughter to the usurer's son.
Thus good heritage is abased,
And noblemen and counts
All decline and come to shame.
Those who marry beneath themselves for money
Ought to be ashamed of it,
And great harm they have from it.
Evil and lowborn knights
And cowards issue from such folk,
Who covet gold and silver
More than doing chivalrous deeds.
Thus does nobility perish.

( But to return to that which I began... )

Can you understand being alone so long
you would go out in the middle of the night
and put a bucket into the well
so you could feel something down there
tug at the other end of the rope?

The year you thought you were dying
was a really great year.

You ate licorice on the beach in January,
swam rum sauced in the icy Pacific
wearing only blue rubber flippers
and your grandfather’s dog tags
and for the first time, it felt good to be cold,
it felt good to be so cold it hurt.

You doted on pigeons and stray cats.
You ate honey peanuts in the park
and re-watched every movie that ever made you
cry, including Steve Martin’s The Jerk.
You tattooed your entire body in Pablo Neruda
translations and cherry blossoms.

You blew all your money on comfortable shoes
and one of those mattresses made from NASA space foam.
You slept the sleep of assassins and kings—remorseless.

You bought chocolate bars from all the kids who came
to your door and stock-piled them in your broom closet.
You left them in your will to THE SECRETARIES,
every last one of them.

You volunteered at the local senior center playing bingo.
When you won you forced to whole room to take shots of
Welch’s grape juice and sing the national anthem.

And you spent time with your favorite lover.
You let him get close.
Secret suicide note, nonsense alibi close.
shampoo scent dissection close.

Close enough to memorize your tells,
hand you your ass at pillow poker,
make your defenses look like the silly decoupage
of paper angels and Victorian roses that they were.
Close enough that your laughter
punched him with mint gum puffs.
Close enough that his sighs drove circles
in the parking lots of your sighs,
close enough to measure your ribcage
in wrists, your palms in lips.

So close, you didn’t even notice
your heart speed up, then stop,
when he kissed you so hard,
when the New Year’s ball dropped down

'Twas Mulga Bill, from Eaglehawk, that caught the cycling craze;
He turned away the good old horse that served him many days;
He dressed himself in cycling clothes, resplendent to be seen;
He hurried off to town and bought a shining new machine;
And as he wheeled it through the door, with air of lordly pride,
The grinning shop assistant said, "Excuse me, can you ride?"


"See here, young man," said Mulga Bill, "from Walgett to the sea,
From Conroy's Gap to Castlereagh, there's none can ride like me.
I'm good all round at everything as everybody knows,
Although I'm not the one to talk - I hate a man that blows.
But riding is my special gift, my chiefest, sole delight;
Just ask a wild duck can it swim, a wildcat can it fight.
There's nothing clothed in hair or hide, or built of flesh or steel,
There's nothing walks or jumps, or runs, on axle, hoof, or wheel,
But what I'll sit, while hide will hold and girths and straps are tight:
I'll ride this here two-wheeled concern right straight away at sight."


'Twas Mulga Bill, from Eaglehawk, that sought his own abode,
That perched above Dead Man's Creek, beside the mountain road.
He turned the cycle down the hill and mounted for the fray,
But 'ere he'd gone a dozen yards it bolted clean away.
It left the track, and through the trees, just like a silver steak,
It whistled down the awful slope towards the Dead Man's Creek.

( It shaved a stump by half an inch, it dodged a big white-box: )

---

Poetry-posting disrupted by life events in the last week. I'm still reading Audre Lorde, but couldn't summon the energy to type out any of my favourites this week. Have some Banjo Patterson, delight and amusement of my childhood, instead.

There's a good live reading of this poem on youtube, by Daryl Barclay.

The Oxford Book of Australian Women's Verse ed. by Susan Lever ( was really interesting! )

The Poems of Lesbia Harford ed. by Nettie Palmer ( Were the next step in my reading quest into Australian women's poetry )

Smut Peddler, a collection of erotic comics ed. by Spike (whoever Spike is) ( Was a gift about which I was initially dubious )

Julia Serano, Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity: ( Was really thought-provoking, and a great escape from medieval lesbian history angst, but I read it so fast I don't have a structured memory of it in hindsight )

He said he would be back and we'd drink wine together
He said that everything would be better than before
He said we were on the edge of a new relation
He said he would never again cringe before his father
He said that he was going to invent full-time
He said he loved me that going into me
He said was going into the world and the sky
He said all the buckles were very firm
He said the wax was the best wax
He said Wait for me here on the beach
He said Just don't cry

I remember the gulls and the waves
I remember the islands going dark on the sea
I remember the girls laughing
I remember they said he only wanted to get away from me
I remember mother saying : Inventors are like poets,
a trashy lot
I remember she told me those who try out inventions are worse
I remember she added : Women who love such are the
Worst of all
I have been waiting all day, or perhaps longer.
I would have liked to try those wings myself.
It would have been better than this.

Young men walking the open streets
Of death's republic, remember your lovers.

When you foresaw with vision prescient
The planet pain rising across your sky
We fused your sight in our soft-burning beauty;
We laid you down in meadows drunk with cowslips
And led you in the ways of our bright city.
Young men who wander death's vague meadows
Remember your lovers who gave you more than flowers.

When truth came prying like a surgeon's knife
Among the delicate movements of your brain
We called your spirit from its narrow den
And kissed your courage back to meet the blade -
Our anaesthetic beauty saved you then.
Young men whose sickness death has cured at last
Remember your lovers and covet their disease.

When you woke grave-chilled at midnight
To pace the pavement of your bitter dream
We brought you back to bed and brought you home
From the dark antechamber of desire
Into our lust as warm as candle-flame.
Young men who lie in the carven beds of death
Remember your lovers who gave you more than dreams.

From the sun sheltering your careless head
Or from the painted devil your quick eye,
We led you out of terror tenderly
And fooled you into peace with our soft words
And gave you all we had and let you die.

Young men drunk with death's unquenchable wisdom
Remember your lovers who gave you more than love.

Down Wall Street
the students marched for peace
Above, construction workers looking on remembered
how it was for them in the old days
before their closed shop white security
and daddy pays the bill
so they climbed down the girders
and taught their sons a lesson
called Marx, is a victim of the generation gap
called Marx, I grew up the hard way so will you
called the limits of a sentimental vision.

When the passion-play was over
and the dust had cleared on Wall Street
500 Union workers together with police
had mopped up Foley Square
with 2000 of their striking sons
who broke and ran
before their fathers chains.

Look here Karl Marx
the apocalyptic vision of amerika!
Workers rise and win
and have not lost their chains
but swing them
side by side with the billy-clubs in blue
securing Wall Street
against the striking students.

A boy told me
if he roller-skated fast enough
his loneliness couldn't catch up to him,

the best reason I ever heard
for trying to be a champion.

What I wonder tonight
pedaling hard down King William Street
is if it translates to bicycles.

A victory! To leave your loneliness
panting behind you on some street corner
while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas,
pink petals that have never felt loneliness,
no matter how slowly they fell.

---

Meanwhile, I strongly recommend you read liseuse's post about PIGEONS IN THE SECRET SERVICE.