english – c-47

Progression One

Angela, my boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend, is from Taiwan. When we go out to eat with my boyfriend’s family, she chats with his parents, even his grandparents, in Chinese. She is imbued with knowledge of Chinese culture and dining etiquette. She eats tiny portions and correctly refuses gifts the Chinese way before actually accepting them. Sometimes, I worry that my boyfriend’s parents approve of her more than they do me because she is more Chinese. She’s the one that pours tea for everyone else before refilling her own cup and I’m the one that doesn’t even drink tea because hot beverages burn my tongue.

Here’s a secret: If you ever want to eat at a Chinese restaurant, bring a Chinese friend and have them order for you. Make it abundantly clear that your companion is Chinese. If you’re feeling adventurous, have your friend order an item off the menu that’s handwritten and taped to the walls of the restaurant. It’s probably better than anything listed on the English menu. If you go to the right places, they will even serve you free soup – all because your friend is Chinese.

The Chinese came to America for the money, not a new way of life. Even as they start new lives overseas, the Chinese are still trying to occupy an exclusive society instead of assimilating. Chinese communities are most often described as tight-knit communities where the ins and outs, like ordering the right dishes, are unknown to foreigners who don’t speak and don’t understand the language. To the rest of the world, Chinatown must seem like a gathering of souvenir knick knacks and restaurants that serve orange chicken.

I don’t really speak Chinese and that’s the way my mother intends for it to be. When people ask if I speak Chinese, I say, with a grin and a nervous chuckle, “I speak a little.” That might even be a stretch, I can handle just enough Chinese to get around.

I never understood why a divorce or a separation should be so psychologically traumatizing to a child. Whenever people find out that I only live with my mother and that my dad lives out somewhere in Elmhurst, they give me that look of pity and mutter, “Oh, I’m sorry” as if there’s something to be sorry about. Maybe I wasn’t as perceptive a child as my mentally scarred counterparts. When my dad moved out,

My family is pretty normal. I was brought up by my grandparents who overfed me. My mother was getting her second, or third, PhD and my dad travelled a lot. I didn’t see a lot of my parent

For what it’s worth, my family is pretty normal. Granted, I’m not really being clear with what I mean by ‘normal’. I was brought up by my grandparents because my mother was busy getting a PhD and my dad was busy travelling. I don’t remember seeing much of them as a child. Then my grandfather died and my mother decided to move to America.

Why would I want a complete family anyway? There are more than eight million people in the world and I am a collector, gathering pieces from each culture with which to slowly build the mosaic of my cultural understanding
Whenever someone asks me if I speak Chinese, I say, with a nervous grin, “I speak a little.” I’m secretly trying to vindicate my mother’s decisions and how she wears my inability to speak Chinese as a source of pride when most Chinese parents shake their heads in dismay at how little their offspring speak of their native language. I’m always secretly trying to vindicate some aspect of my life to someone, especially the Chinese, because they find something wrong with every aspect of my life that I reveal to them. No, I can’t read or write Chinese. No, I haven’t been back to China since I moved here. No, we don’t really cook at home. No, we’re not really like you. And no, we don’t have a problem.

After a year’s worth of family gatherings, parties and dinner banquets, I’m still where I have always been, on the outside looking in, but I’ve become an expected guest – Allen’s girlfriend.

I’m still not comfortable saying anything to anyone in Chinese, but I’m not as frightened of the occasional conversation with his aunt or uncle or poking fun at the struggles between his younger cousins.

I’m not too broken up about it, though, not having eight million relatives. Sometimes I’m actually relieved. After a year’s worth of family gatherings, parties and dinner banquet, I’m starting to miss a Sunday morning at home, without half a dozen screaming children playing a video game somewhere or the shouts and yells of the adults gambling in the living room. Or, about being that odd half-family when tradition demands that it be a whole. All the roundness that Kingston observes in her life, “the round moon cakes and round doorways, the round tables of graduated size that fit one roundness inside another, round windows and rice bowls” (313) are absent from mine, allowing me to fill my life with shapes of my choosing.

Even after a year’s worth of family gatherings and banquet dinners, getting to know almost all of Allen’s relatives by name, I’m still where I have always been, on the outside looking in.
After a year’s worth of family gatherings and banquet dinner, it’s almost as if I’ve been inducted into their family. His dad traded his Honda for a Nissan Pathfinder so there’s room for Angela and I when we go to one of this ubiquitous gatherings.

The piglet lies face down on the oblong serving tray, the crispy skin and meat of its back exposed and sliced into rectangular portions.

The piglet rests on a tall, oblong serving tray that dominates the glass Lazy Susan at the center of the table. Face down, the meat along it’s is exposed and sliced into rectangular portions. The snout, a hard knob of skin the color of mahogany, is pointed at the elderly who are served first.

The exterior of a Chinese banquet hall may be misleading.

I don’t really speak Chinese. When people ask if I do, I say, “I speak a little.” I give a

My dad wants me to help him do some work at his office on Sunday, but it’s late Saturday night and I’m hurtling down the New Jersey Turnpike in the backseat of my boyfriend’s parents’ Honda. I’m on the phone, trying, in my broken Chinese

The car zips along the highway, past closed shopping malls and empty parking lots, towards their house, one of many newly built houses that, along with a man-made lake, comprised the town of Sayreville. A water tower with the town’s name emblazoned across the tank looms over the highway exit we get off at.

It’s late Saturday night and I’m hurtling down the New Jersey Turnpike in the backseat of my boyfriend’s parents’ silver Honda. I’m on the phone with my dad, trying to tell him one thing or another in my broken Chinese. Something about helping out with his work, something about the plans my mother and I made with him to go away for the weekend. Every once in a while, I give up completely and just use English, hoping he understands. Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn’t, a strange sort of language barrier.

Later, Allen’s dad tells me that he is surprised by how good my Chinese is. He doesn’t exp

Why is my computer lagging?

He downloads this program that’s supposed to help him concentrate, eliminate all the distractions from his computer desktop, his Facebook messages and little instant message bleeps and bloops that pop up in the corner every now and then, everything. As he gives the cashier his brand new Bank of America credit card that, much to his girlfriend’s display, he cannot stop talking about and toying with, he wonders why the hell is he buying a second monitor.

I have to stop writing Roy and Riza fanfiction. I write nothing else. Its easy. All the hard work’s been done for you, the character development, the plot line. Everything. All I have to do is channel some of what used to be my pent up sexual frustration, loneliness and neediness into them and they come alive as puppets of my adolescent longings. Now what? I’m not exactly sexually frustrated anymore or lonely or needy. Okay, maybe I’m still needy, but at least I fixed the first two. In fact, now, I’m pummeled with more ‘real life’ stuff. Like, getting into law school. Like, what’s going to happen after I get into law school. How I’m going to survive three years grinding away at dense texts and competing like an animal against my much smarter peers, paying off a seemingly endless amount of debt just to get the damn degree, that maybe, maybe, I won’t even ever get to use because the economy is in a slump, there’s a recession going on and everyone’s getting fired and laid off and no one can find a goddamn job. Why does it have to be like this? I didn’t ask to be put here and I don’t see why I just have to shut up and live with it. Adapting is one thing but accepting this crap is another. I don’t want to master this crap either so don’t give me any of that, oh, just work harder and make something of yourself bullshit. I don’t understand that either. What the hell does it mean to make something of myself? In whose eyes am I something? In what way am I something? What qualifications, what degrees, what talents must I acquire to become this something? A Steve Jobs or Bill Gates? A Donald Trump or Rupert Murdoch? An Einstein or Oppenheimer? What? Do I need genius? Talent? Luck? I don’t know why I have to work so hard just to survive. What is surviving anyway? Why do I have this drive, why do we have this need? Why? Questions I’ll viagra have answers to, but doesn’t it mean something that I ask these questions? Does my curiosity not speak to some innate truth? Am I just copping out? Too lazy, too inept to deal with the harsh competition of life so I resort to midly fanciful, useless philosophical panderings in order to have some sense of self left to face the world with? Are these truly meaningless questions that we will never have answers to so we should just stop asking? Why do I feel so empty sometimes when I think about the world I am about to be swallowed by. This behemouth of tragedy, greed and evil, a perverted reflection of human nature that I am thrust upon to face and accept. The daily grind of work, of lethargy, boredome, dealing with people who are equally sickened by their situation, half-assed bullshit lives that no one wants to lead.

Maybe this is too depressing. A little too depressing. It used to be like this when I had no one and nothing in my, and I mean nothing, seemed good. I’d pine for days and weeks and months for boys who would never like me because I am fat. I would despair for days and weeks and months at my falling grades and lack of initiative in classes that will determine my future. But when you get past it all, looking back at it, how much of any of this really mattered? Very little, I guess. When white people had their social ups and downs in high school, I think most of us suffered from some kind of mental trauma of going to Stuy. Exhaustion is perhaps the best way of putting it and those with the drive and the fuel to make it past that succeed? Do they? Then again, what does it mean to succeed in the first place.

Say what you will about anime, but I’ll defend it to death. Honestly, there’s something about a good series that just stays with you and I mean, really stays with you. You hear the theme song, you think back to a certain a scene, a certain moment and it just gets you, deep down somwhere. Its like thinking about middle school and all of the days that you spent doing something meaningless and stupid with your friends but it was the best thing you could have ever done and maybe its generic, trashy and not as amazing as something more legitimate like science or whatever, and maybe it is a little bit creepy and the fandom is generally populated by fat people who like to dress up and fail at being their favorite characters, but deep down in there somewhere, there’s this feeling, this feeling that’s irreplaceable and doesn’t come from anything, anything else. It makes me want to run and keep running till I can’t run anymore and leap from a cliff into the invite world and embrace everything and hug everything and welcome anything and everything. I just had an ephiphany. Perhaps, this is joy. This very feeling. But its amazing and I can’t put it into words no matter how hard I try. It just makes me want to through myself from something large and tall and epic and feel the wind in my hair and ground fall away from me and let it all go.

There’s something about summer and the way the sky looks, the crisp blue with smidges of hazy white clouds flowing above a sea of green grass. Holding your friend’s hand and walking home in the half empty streets. Summers in anime are different from what they are here. You don’t feel the humid heat, you only see the colors and it looks amazing.

I can’t think of anything to write. I babbled a lot yesterday. Mm, we’ll see. Sometimes I’m inspired and sometimes I’m not.
I am jealous of people who draw better than I do and who study science, because it feels like I will never be that talented and I will never have what it takes to be a pre-med student. I wonder if they are good at any of the things I am or, at least that I feel I am good at. Like, Jeffrey. That last conversation about my switching majors and how I didn’t have what it takes to be in science? It pisses me that he so easily wrote off all the things I’m good at by taking one class. One class? Are you kidding me? I’m not daunted by the sciences, I simply don’t want to try anymore. I’d rather spend my mental energy on something I like and want to spend it on.
I feel like I’m going to spend the rest of my life justifying my choice to someone and I’m always going to be laughed at and looked down upon by scientists or mathematicians for what major I am, or what I study or studied. Hey, philosophy is the fucking foundation of your modern sciences. Without this shit, there isn’t any of your shit. Don’t forget it. It is as if they owe their superiority to what I am studying, yet they so easily forget this. And, it’s also kind of fun. I actually like logic.

The story of Kingston’s aunt is passed down to her out of her mother’s practical necessity, as a warning as for Kingston to heed, but Kingston’s own retelling of the story is written out of a different necessity. Kingston writes this story so her aunt can be remembered. “You must not tell anyone” (308), her mother warns her. For her betrayal and adultery, Kingston’s aunt is forsaken by everyone, her husband’s family, her own family and her village. She no longer has a name, a voice, she no longer exists. In her aunt’s native village, as envisioned by Kingston, everyone is related, connected by 115 relationship titles as brother or sister. One cannot both be family and an outsider at the same time.
“‘You must not tell anyone,’ my mother said, ‘what I am about to tell you’” (308). No Name Woman begins with a secret, a secret now made public by Kingston’s story. It is passed down to her out of her mother’s practical necessity, as a warning for the teenage Kingston, not a story for her to repeat. The silence that surrounds her aunt
It is easy to keep quiet about the little things: eating the last piece of cake in the fridge, stealing a handful of those tiny pencils from a mini golf course, even a harmless lie about why you were late to work – was it really another train delay? But, it’s hard to keep quiet about the big things, the things that keep you up at night: the things you keep turning over and over again in your mind until its jagged confusions become smooth and understandable, maybe even acceptable. No Name Woman, a dark family secret finally made public, belongs in the latter kind of thing. The story is passed down to Kingston by her mother, who breaks the oath of malicious silence that surrounds the story of her husband’s forgotten sister. In her mother’s mind, the story, told out of necessity, is a warning to her daughter: do not shame your family by becoming your aunt. Once told and its purpose served, the story and her aunt are again forgotten. Where the story ends is not as clear to her as it is to her mother. Not only is her aunt shunned through silence, but she herself keeps silent, never accusing the man who wronged her, drowning herself in the well so that her ghost “waits silently by the water” (315), she never speaks up to vindicate herself. Guessing at the details of what kind of a woman her aunt was, Kingston looks to her for “ancestral help” (311) in reaching her own self-identity, trying to bridge the gap between what it means to be Chinese and what it means to be Chinese-American. The immigrants Kingston describes are loud, shouting to each other in America as they would back in their village fields, still connected through their kinship. Ironically, it is in America, where Kingston is embarrassed by her mother’s loudness and tries to emulate low, inaudible “American tones” (312), that her voice speaks the loudest. Often the things that one tries to bury the deepest are the things that most rises to the surface.
The characters in The Most Dangerous Beauty as real and so are the events that it details. David William, enamored with the beautiful pictures in Pernkopf’s Anatomy, goes in search of the last remaining artist of the book. Generally denounced for the heinous Nazi crimes that aided in the creation of the book, many do not deny the beauty of the 800 or so pictures spread throughout four volumes. The central theme in Paterniti’s piece is a sense of shame, forgetting, reconciliation with the events that took place during the creation of book. At the same, Williams is willing to seemingly forgiven all the past behind the book for the sake of its beauty that so captivated him in his youth. Similarly, Kingston is also fascinated by the story of her aunt and though she is unable to actively track down her past like Williams is able to do, she also gives life to something forgotten.

P: David Williams is a man who is confused and conflicted about his love for the Book. He is trying to remember something that most people condemn by its association with Nazi atrocities and crimes.
K: I am trying to remember a shameful aspect of my family’s history that I was told to never speak about.
P: In this way, you and David Williams are similar, trying to talk about, if not vindicate, those who can no longer speak for themselves.
K: And, we are also not similar because Williams is drawn to the Book because of its beauty, not because of a lack of self-identity.
P: Then again, the persons that fascinate you both are, in ways, what made you who you are today. The Book dramatically shaped Williams’ life and so did the story of your aunt. When Williams means Batke, he truly believes him to be a kind, old man.
K: Unlike, Williams, I will never be able to know the truth about my aunt. I can only guess.
P: Williams also encountered something like the silence your family keeps about your aunt in his research about the book. People are quick to forget the shameful and bury what they do not wish to remember.
K: But, no one curses the dead like my family does. Even though Pernkopf is condemned as a Nazi and his book the source of controversy, David Williams and others who admire the book will remember him, in a way.
P: That can also be true of your aunt. Your story is her vindication and though she may not be able to rest in peace, you have given her some measure of conclusion.
K: By chasing the ghosts of the dead, both of us may do more to harass them than console them.

Through this story, Kingston tries to “name the unspeakable” (309), filling in bits and pieces of the story that were left ou
The silence that surrounds her aunt, the forgetfulness of her Kingston’s family is deliberate and incriminating, even in death her aunt continues to be branded as a traitor.

English Final Project

Okay, so basically, here you have this kid, FREDERIC Blanc (don’t laugh at the blatant reference to a certain someone) who is a narcissistic asshole (and don’t laugh at this blatant reference to a mythological figure) who lives in Paris. He’s a pretty little French boy, with the most gorgeous blond hair (you can start laughing now) and the most delicate blue irises, an ungodly shade of an unearthly color, so rich and so deep, so mesmerizing women are to said to have simply fallen in love with from a single glance (laugh, you bastards, laugh).

And here you have NICHOLAS Tremble (this is a less blatant reference to Nyx, laugh anyways), who falls in love with Ric-I mean FREDERIC, who completes scorns the guy because he is in love with PERSEPHONE Faye, the daughter of some rich nobleman who is, like, the Paris Hilton of 1884 Paris. Of course, NICHOLAS is a retard and is mournfully heartbroken.

Oh, right, NICHOLAS meets FREDERIC while hunting and NICHOLAS has a big thing for guns and weaponry and all that nice technologic what have you’s of the 1884, think Crystal Palace and whatever (fine, NICHOLAS is…now…uh, British). And so, as a parting gift of sorts, FREDERIC buys him a French flintlock dueling pistol (retard) and sends him off happily on his way, or so FREDERIC thinks.

In the meanwhile, PERSEPHONE’s parents arrange for her to be married to some random guy, AIDAN Leroy (yet another reference), who is like the Renaissance man of Paris at the time, he does, quite literally, everything, hunt, fish, swim, duel, draw, paint, write poetry, sing, dance, plays three different instruments and has a cult of women following him everywhere he goes.

In the meanwhile, NICHOLAS, having seen FREDERIC flirt with PERSEPHONE and all that nice noise, is more heartbroken and kills himself on FREDERIC’s doorstep with the pistol he was gifted and pleads to the heavens for divine retribution. FREDERIC, slightly shaken by the whole event, is the talk of the town and people give him really odd looks and PERSEPHONE’s parents totally hate him.

Did I mention Freddy has a thing for mirrors? And built himself a hall of mirrors, like that of Versailles? And he ponders up and down his hallways just starring at himself.

Then, Freddy finally learns that his beloved PERSEPHONE is going to be married off to AIDAN. Of course, he gets ridiculously angry and even angrier after PERSEPHONE is seen spending more and more time with AIDAN. After having a chat with Eris, one of his friends, who jokingly suggests just simply killing AIDAN because she, too, was scorned by the Adonis (haha, get it?) of 1880’s Paris, FREDERIC takes up the proposition and plots to kill Mr. Renaissance Man.

Instead of hiring a mercenary, or something smart, FREDERIC goes and seduces KERES Charron (not a reference, I swear), a servant in AIDAN’s house. The girl is so completely and devastatingly in love with FREDERIC that she’s willing to do absolutely anything, and boy do I mean anything, for him. So one night, he brings up the idea of hey, why don’t we kill your lord and master because I said so! And because he is the only obstacle to our deep, deep, deep love? The latter is most definitely a lie but she goes and she kills AIDAN anyway, with, gee, let’s guess, a flintlock dueling pistol and comes back to FREDERIC covered in blood with a loaded gun in hand. After having celebratory sex, or whatever, or something, KERES suffers this giant emotional breakdown and goes completely insane and in this really odd battle thing, argument (after the sex) FREDERIC just shoots her (dipshit) and gets one of his servants, ALDRIC (more obscure references), to dump the body into the Seine on a misty morning.

The kid is not so torn up over the death of KERES, but rather, that he might be incriminated for murder and what not, but is comforted by his gorgeous reflections in each and every one of his beautiful, gigantic mirrors lining the entirety of his home now, every single room, mirrors and mirrors. And his servants are no longer allowed to walk around the house without a mask because their reflections are so inferior to his. His lifestyle becomes more and more decadent and exuberant as he spends his fortune on random pieces of furniture, tea cups, weird, useless technology, silks, oriental mysteries, his house, his mansion, his so called palace with a beauty and expansiveness to rival that of Versailles, as the stories go, flourishes. Giant fountains, gardens, flowers, marble staircases. FREDERIC, after murdering KERES, becomes slightly insane himself, imagining his life story to be that of the gods, his home is not Paris, it is not even Earth, but it is the heavens up above, Mount Olympus, only the gods can rival his beauty, his brilliance.

After AIDAN is found dead in his house, PERSEPHONE is crushed and crying and sad and weeping and weeping and as it so happens, bumps into FREDERIC at AIDAN’s gigantic funeral, chock full of other weeping women with a gigantic procession of spider lilies from FREDERIC (him and his obsession of the orient and yet another reference). They go back to his home, with all of its mirrors and for a brief moment, PERSEPHONE is amazed by the wondrous display. They also proceed to fornicate in the middle of all his mirrors (American Psycho) and FREDERIC looks up every now and then to admire his beautiful reflection. PERSEPHONE, slightly annoyed by his constant narcissistic weirdness jokes that he should look at her instead, after all, she’s so much prettier. This really ticks off Freddy more than it should, his beauty insulted and what you have. He finds a letter opener somewhere and in this awful fit of rage (or, crime of passion) stabs PERSEPHONE to death a million times.

And at the end of it all, he’s left, covered in blood, naked, a total mess with a look of absolute vulgarity across his beautiful visage and he starts having flashbacks of the night KERES killed AIDAN, the way she looked, the way she looked when he was in her, the way she looked when he told ALDRIC to toss her into the Seine. Then he looks down and see PERSEPHONE, face covered by her once beautiful chocolate hair, smeared in blood across her naked breasts, rich, warm blood oozing slowly across the cold marble floor from the gashes on her body, her limp hands twitching slightly and suddenly he felt the urge to vomit, to regurgitate his sins and wash his hands of this spilled blood. He sees no exit, just mirrors, mirrors upon mirrors upon mirrors, every room he ran to, footsteps trailing blood, every hallway, every possible crevice covered by his own reflection, a reflection of absolute madness.

He bursts out into his garden, with all the fountains and lilies, which he had received as a gift from Eris (who traveled to Japan) and had planted so happily because of their rich color that had reminded him of blood, along with red poppies and blood red roses (man had a thing for red flowers, neh?). And all he could see, letter opener in blood-stained hand, was blood and more blood, seeping as it did across the marble, across the expanse of his garden, across the horizon as a wine red sunset fell lugubriously across the sky. And suddenly, he shrieks, utterly loosing his mind, what little sanity he has left and in an attempt to escape from this nightmare, tears across the blood soaked garden and leaps into the fountain in effort to cleanse him soul. All he sees, instead, is another reflection of himself.

PERSEPHONE’s parents are going nuts looking for her because she hasn’t returned home and has left no word. ADRASTEIA Tailler, a long time secret lover (by that I mean stalker) of FREDERIC, tells them that she has seen them walking together, towards his home, after the funeral. The parents send the police over and the first thing they see is the naked, bloody corpse of their daughter and her reflection in a billion mirrors. They find FREDERIC later, rolling around half naked in his fountain, mind broken and muttering absolute gibberish, suffering from a hypnagogic fit.

As the police attempt to constrain him, he screams, imagining that Hynpos and Thanatos, the twin brothers of death and sleep are here to take him to Tartarus, to suffer the same fate as Tantalus or whoever else happens to be stuck for an eternity in Tartarus. Instead, Nyx, night, appears (ADRASTEIA in real life) and comforts him and offers him solace in Elysium. Following the comforting voice of the dark goddess, FREDERIC quiets and is led away to an asylum. ADRASTEIA visits him nightly and nightly he is haunted by the nightmare of his own savage reflection, the beauty that he once possessed and the maimed, blood corpses of those he had murdered, his own eternal damnation, NICHOLAS Faye’s plea for divine retribution finally find its way to him. FREDERIC Blanc, being a man of rather remarkable, dies slowly and miserably of old age in the Paris asylum, dreaming, a gift of Morpheus, of mirrors and the decay of human nature.

The Blanc estate is said to be abandoned, the gardens unkempt and the fountain dry. Nicknamed the House of Thousand Mirrors, many of them broken, it’s still a hot subject of debate among the gossip artists of Paris as to exactly what happened in the curious mirrored house. By some strange force of nature, spider lilies, not a native plant of Paris, blossom yearly between the cracks in the blood stained marble floor, covered in shards of glass, where Persephone Faye met her death.

English poem, ask not why……

If life were an eternity

Bound not by this mortality

Surely my love would not be so

Stubborn and unwilling to go

We would dance under moon lit skies

Ponder the stars and fireflies

Spend our days sailing far away

Welcoming salty ocean spray

I would follow you if you run

To the end of time just for fun

Bestirring from slumber my love

Pierces the clear heavens up above

Lifetimes I shall spend a million

Drowning in rich vermillion

Eons I shall spend awaiting

Mind numb and fingers aching

To feel the silk of your smooth hair

Wispy as midsummer night’s air

I’d savor your sweet cherry

If only life were so merry

But often I am haunted by

Frivolous death mocking and sly

Laughing and bitter he draws close

To hang me by a lonesome noose

Softly time whispers in my ear

Make haste for the end is near

In thy hand a single dark rose

My heart or his for you to choose

Of this game I soon grow weary

Tarry not you sad sick fairy

Oh darling surely I would hate

If you were to make death your mate

Now sweet let us go you and I

Soon before life passes us by

While daylight is young and plenty

Die a little sweet and gently

Burn quick in the carnal fires

Of my insatiable desires

Now let us find them while we may

And now like frolicking cubs at play

Seek yonder horizons broad and wide

For no longer have we to hide

Uncork the bottle of our strife

And drink to the lees this fine life

Thus, though we have no true power

Delay him we can by each hour