#rosesarered #hamilton

Hamilton’s read
For dropping some knowledge.
Smelliest dropping?
Electoral College!

Valentine’s day approaches, and “Roses are red”-like poems are everywhere. Everything’s been coming up Hamilton in my mind for a while now. Above is my best combination of the two things. Note: Hamilton described the Electoral College as “at least excellent” in Federalist Paper 68.

I’ll spare you most of the others, except:

Roses are red,
Like Hamilton’s blood.
A. Burr, you spilled it!
Your legacy’s crud.

Any other Hamiltonian Valentine poems?

The Rime of the Ancient Harbour Town

A poem inspired by the tabletop game Harbour.

Gullsbottom is a harbor town.
I’ll tell you of it, mate:
The leading occupations there
Are crime and real estate.

Why do you ask? You’re moving there?
Crime’s not for you, you think?
You’d like to talk of property?
You’re paying for the drinks?

Don’t flash your cash in Gullsbottom—
Unless you want to float
In harbour deep, with money gone,
And slash across your throat.

How do you buy your buildings
Using neither coins nor notes?
You sell goods from your warehouse,
Which are loaded onto boats.

The money gained by selling goods
Buys buildings the same moment;
So you don’t have to carry cash
To be violently stolen.

When goods are sold, the prices change:
The goods just sold go down.
And that may inconvenience
Your rivals in the town.

You’ll start with just a few goods.
You will visit various buildings.
With swift and shrewd and simple moves
Your warehouse you’ll be filling.

So it’s all about the buildings:
You will use them to get goods;
Which you ship to buy the buildings,
To be big boss of the ‘hood…

Which you’ll be when your collection
Of bought buildings is the best;
And I’m certain that your actions
Will be smarter than the rest.

You say it’s time you must set off
Toward your new abode?
Gullsbottom bound you are now?
Let’s have one more for the road!

October Poetry

Universal Adam linked to Breathing Hannah’s poetic post about October. Between them, they reminded me of Ted Hughes’ poem “October Dawn.”

A glass half full of wine left out
To the dark heaven all night, by dawn
Has dreamed a premonition
Of ice across its eye as if
The ice-age had begun to heave.

“October Dawn” may well be my favorite poem (with due respect to Hannah, Sylvia, WB, and many other poets). When I looked for it online, Google sent me to Yahoo, and to an answer to a question about the poem’s meaning. It’s a pretty good answer, I’d say, although not the answer; and the Yahoo answers page has the virtue of quoting the poem complete, albeit with line breaks messed up.