POETS Day: Robert Herrick and Virgins That He Thinks Need to Hurry Up and, Well…

Jimmy Page in The Song Remains The Same, 1973. Photo by Open culture, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s that day again. P.O.E.T.S. Day – Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Like May Day and Labor Day, it is the bane of the ownership class with all their capital and hopes in investment. Silly bourgeoisie. Today is for the workers. The kind of guys (and gals, don’t you know) that a president needs to have a beer with for a photo op to fuel subsequent campaign drivel. This is the good old days.

Work meetings at the end of the week are just that. Work meetings with a weekend horizon will be filled with subject matter that deserves a weekend’s worth of putting off until the next opportunity to be put off. Face it. If it mattered, it would be the subject of a Monday meeting followed by a caffeine-fueled week of paper shuffling and late evening Chinese take-out. A Friday meeting subject is discussed so that management can tell Bill from HR or Sally from accounting that their worries are being addressed and then off to the Hamptons we go. You can skip the hell out of that.

But meetings are for the shirts. I’m here, at least this week, for the working guy. The shirts can say “Excuse me, I’ll be right back,” once or twice and then ask for an early leave and everybody assumes they have diarrhea and lets them go home without a question they don’t want to ask. It’s too easy for them.

For the working guy, it’s not so simple. I’m thinking turf toe. Nobody knows what turf toe means but it keeps college and NFL running backs out for weeks at a time. Surely it can get you out of the warehouse a few hours early on a Friday. It’s the high ankle sprains of nebulous injuries and if you can’t make hay with that you don’t deserve a P.O.E.T.S. Day. Call it turf toe and pick a consistent foot to limp on. We’ll see you at the bar round three, you clever bastard.

Today’s poet makes you feel bad for Roy Moore. He messed up big time.

Moore was—at least I hope he was, but he may persist—a twit politician from my dearly beloved home state of Alabama. On many and most subjects he wasn’t wrong, but he could cast a love of bunnies and the hope that unicorns guard your grandbabies from anger bears in a controversial light with his hapless attempts to promote the pro-bunny/unicorn anti-anger bear position.

He was also a creep.

There are multiple allegations of sexual misconduct although none, as of this writing and my research, have gone beyond the alleged point and so many politicians exist in this unfair grey zone. What is established is that Moore, in his thirties, and I need to write this again so that you didn’t elide by the assertion that he, in his thirties, hung out at the mall and asked sixteen-year-old girls out.

During the campaign it was noted that the age of consent in Alabama is sixteen so no harm. But wait. Foul. That’s creepy. I was sixteen in Alabama when his thirty-year-old sophisticated self was trolling the food court for skirt and I didn’t know a single female classmate whose date was beyond a weekend bagging grocery store W-2. Moore thought a thirty-year-old dating a sixteen-year-old was okay? I remember when a ninth grader dating a senior was scandalous.

We, as a society, like to think that we rightfully shun such behavior, but we don’t. It is our assertion that pedophilia is bad and taking advantage of the underage for sexual gratification is among the most horrid offenses someone who cannot sing or play guitar might commit. But, we seem to say, if you have superior vocal chords or strum well, “Have at her.”

Mic Jagger is not a pedophile. At least not to my knowledge. He bedded an eighteen-year-old MacKenzie Phillips when she turned eighteen. That’s fine. Per her autobiography, he told her that he’s been eyeing her since she was ten. That’s not fine. It’s not illegal, but it’s not fine. It’s creepy. It’s disqualifying from casting party line votes in the world’s most honored deliberative body creepy but we make him a cultural icon instead.

David Bowie gets a mention from Lori Mattix, as does Jagger. Mattix and her friend Sable Starr were among the “baby groupies” that were a part of the early seventies Los Angeles music scene. Per her telling, a twenty-something Bowie took her fourteen-year-old virginity while engaged a threesome including Starr. It’s a she said/he never really responded as far as I can tell thing but if we apply the Kavanaugh standard, things don’t look good for Ziggy. There were no ch-ch-ch-charges brought. He had that in his favor.

Mattix, again while middle school-aged, had a relationship with Jimmy Page. These men allegedly, though creditably and brazenly in Page’s case, fucked children. We honor them, though. We prize some things at the cost of some people. I don’t think the term collateral applies to sacrificial virgins. Umbridge is reserved for the less fashionable.

Poor Roy Moore. If only he could carry a tune. But for a doh-ray-me goes he.

Today’s poem follows a simple pattern. It’s eight syllables followed by seven then eight then seven again for four stanzas with an abab, cdcd, etc. rhyme scheme. Robert Herrick may or may not break from that depending on how you pronounce “flower” but in all Christian charity, it’s a well regulated and fitting piece.

It’s pleasant too, so much so that the opening line has become a bit of a cliché. It hails immediacy and seemingly encourages indulgence, but I don’t think that’s the case. There is a humility about it. A realization that we are momentarily not dust and time is a precious commodity not to be squandered. I may be pilloried for this, but I think it’s a stoic poem. I made myself laugh wondering how many drafts he wrote.

To The Virgins, To Make Much of Time

Robert Herrick (1591 – 1674)

Gather ye Rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to day,
To morrow will be dying.

The glorious Lamp of Heaven, the Sun,
The higher he’s a getting;
The sooner will his Race be run,
And neerer he’s to Setting.

That Age is best, which is the first,
When Youth and Blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times, still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time;
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.