Ambiguity Thaied to a Dragon's Tale

[alice wellintown]

Why does P insist with these puns and ironies? Clever P. Larry heads
over to Pepe's place, a pink prison (in street talk this is kin to
being pulled by pussy hairs of pussy whipped), and of course, Larry's
theif (Shasta) has returned, safe and sound, but Pepe is missing his
man. Larry, a diminutive dick, plays the Hulk (a big dude well
endowed), but doesn't play eightball (an eightball is 3 1/2 grams of
smack or coke & ...) with Pepe, who can't quite run the table, finish
the game because, like Hope and Larry and countless others in this
work, he can't quite accept that Lenny is down o tubo final.   The
prison Baker's Pink (errased from the Rainbow flag) was introduced to
prisons and madhouses in the 1920s. That Pepe and Lenny would paint
their place in prison pink, and that the place is contructed of
fibrewood, not the best material if one is expecting a hard rain's
falling, re-works the GR self-imprisoned homosexual theme.

This all reminds us of Shakespeare's Richard II in Prison (poetic
existentialism that rivals Macbeth's famous Sound & Fury and makes
Hamlet seem but a stilted and haughty college theatre major by
comparison--see Hamlet 2)  and of a poem, "The Thief",  by Cowley:

Scene IV. - Pomfret. The Dungeon of the Castle.

Enter King Richard.

K. Rich. I have been studying how I may compare
This prison where I live unto the world:
And for because the world is populous,
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it; yet I`ll hammer it out.
My brain I`ll prove the female to my soul;
My soul the father: and these two beget
A generation of still-breeding thoughts,
And these same thoughts people this little world,
In humours like the people of this world,
For no thought is contented. The better sort,
As thoughts of things divine, are intermix`d
With scruples, and do set the word itself
Against the word:
As thus, `Come, little ones`; and then again,
`It is as hard to come as for a camel
To thread the postern of a needle`s eye.`
Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot
Unlikely wonders; how these vain weak nails
May tear a passage through the flinty ribs
Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls;
And, for they cannot, die in their own pride.
Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves
That they are not the first of fortune`s slaves,
Nor shall not be the last; like silly beggars
Who sitting in the stocks refuge their shame,
That many have and others must sit there:
And in this thought they find a kind of ease,
Bearing their own misfortune on the back
Of such as have before endured the like.
Thus play I in one person many people,
And none contented: sometimes am I king;
Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar,
And so I am: then crushing penury
Persuades me I was better when a king:
Then am I king`d again; and by and by
Think that I am unking`d by Bolingbroke,
And straight am nothing: but whate`er I be,
Nor I nor any man that but man is
With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased.
With being nothing
[Music.
Music do I hear?
Ha, ha! keep time. How sour sweet music is
When time is broke and no proportion kept!
So is it in the music of men`s lives.
And here have I the daintiness of ear
To check time broke in a disorder`d string;
But for the concord of my state and time
Had not an ear to hear my true time broke.
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;
For now hath time made me his numbering clock:
My thoughts are minutes, and with sighs they jar
Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch,
Whereto my finger, like a dial`s point,
Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.
Now sir, the sound that tells what hour it is
Are clamorous groans, that strike upon my heart,
Which is the bell: so sighs and tears and groans
Show minutes, times, and hours; but my time
Runs posting on in Bolingbroke`s proud joy,
While I stand fooling here, his Jack o` the clock.
This music mads me: let it sound no more;
For though it have holp madmen to their wits,
In me it seems it will make wise men mad.
Yet blessing on his heart that gives it me!
For `t is a sign of love, and love to Richard,
Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world.

The Thief


Thou robb'st my days of business and delights,
   Of sleep thou robb'st my nights ;
   Ah, lovely thief, what wilt thou do?
   What?  rob me of heaven too?
   Even in my prayers thou hauntest me:
   And I, with wild idolatry,
Begin to God, and end them all to thee.
Is it a sin to love, that it should thus
   Like an ill conscience torture us?
   Whate'er I do, where'er I go—
   None guiltless e'er was haunted so!—
   Still, still, methinks, thy face I view,
   And still thy shape does me pursue,
As if, not you me, but I had murdered you.

>From books I strive some remedy to take,
   But thy name all the letters make;
   Whate'er 'tis writ, I find thee there,
   Like points and commas everywhere.
   Me blessed for this let no man hold,
   For I, as Midas did of old,
Perish by turning every thing to gold.

What do I seek, alas, or why do I
   Attempt in vain from thee to fly?
   For, making thee my deity,
   I gave thee then ubiquity.
   My pains resemble hell in this:
   The divine presence there too is,
But to torment men, not to give them bliss.