(Today we honor old Fat Jack. The Drifter has kept him in my mind lately, so the old knight rates a poem. In fact I think that I can dedicate this to His High Rotundity as well as the co-Editor of Saragun Springs— LA)
(The Raccoon in the image is named Falstaff; a truly fitting individual)
i
Handmade gods do not laugh
Even when they employ a staff
Of dull scribes, Bob Hope funny,
He who bought bad jokes with Chrysler money
ii
Go through pages and seek jolly sages
And learn good Will penned the man for all ages
Tankards of ale, sack and wassails
Falstaff lives on after all else fails
iii
Prince Hal was a pal till power spread him nebulous
‘Twas crown and church made him lugubrious
Yet Jack kept laughing and blessed the saints of the doomed
Hallo Pistol, Nym, Bardolph, Drifter and Harold, may your keeness for-ever, Bloom
iv
Kings lose their humour when see good
In split heads, spilled guts and land by the rood
Yet Hal neither lived long nor richly
Nor was he guided home by gentle Dame Quickly
Saragun Springs 
The Bard is very possibly chuckling – if only we knew where his head is at! dd
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Thank you Diane
I saw a cartoon (maybe it was Futurama) that has his noggin alive and well in a jar, on a shelf alongside Einstein, Mother Teresa, Hitler, Joan of Arc, Bill and Hilary Clinton and so forth.
I think space aliens took him myself!
Leila
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but they only took the clever bit. Makes sense to me.
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Leila
This whole piece shines with the element Bloom called “the daemonic,” which is the raw spirit of Literature itself, through the ages, back in time, and also alive in the here and now, passed on from writer to writer, forward into the future, too.
This poem can sit comfortably beside Harold’s small, pungent book called Falstaff: Give Me Life, and is a fitting tribute to Bloom as well as Falstaff as well as Will as well as the Spirit of Life and Literature itself.
Thanks for the dedication!
Many can write in our day (just as almost everyone wrote sonnets in Shakespeare’s day), but very, very few can write an authentically Shakespearean tribute to none other than The Bard himself.
For that, one needs to be possessed by the daemonic, which is much different than the “demonic”!
Thanks again, this is wonderful, resonating, life-giving work Falstaff himself is probably enjoying!
Dale
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WHOA AND WOW, THIS IS A FANTASTIC PHOTO OF FALSTAFF, HE LOOKS JUST LIKE HIMSELF!
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Falstaff lives on after all else fails’. What a wonderful line! A big heart of a poem. Funny, not Bob Hope funny.
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Things get more interesting when Falstaff’s around; things get more interesting when you, that’s to say, YOU Leila, write about them. Seems to me your specialised subject is anything under the sun. No wanton compliment, this.
Geraint
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Hello and thank you Geraint
Hearing that from someone who writes as beautifully as you makes it extra special.
Thank you for everything!!!
Leila
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