I won’t call him Lord because of this painting.

He looks like a goof – a runner up on Star Search goof. This is the first superstar? That’s no Lord.

I almost forgot the required stuff. Back to the goof in a sec.

It’s P.O.E.T.S. Day! Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday! Get thee from thy workplace verily!

You can’t help but see all before you covered in blood and random Lego pieces. Obviously that’s not true, but if you tell your boss about the blood and Lego gambit it’s bound to get you out early and the weekend can begin.

Not up for the psychiatric follow up? Try a cold. We’re in the end stages of COVID but the least of viral symptoms still gets you an overblown license to absenteeism.  Go Rahm on this. Never let a crisis go to waste.

Alternately there’s car trouble, gas leaks, emergency vasectomies, and all manner of other excuses. Bottom line: Get out of work early and sit yourself at my bar. I’m a heavy pourer.

Back to Byron. He had a good time. Today’s selection (I desperately want to call the poems I pick “clips” like I’m Letterman and I’m helping Charles Grodin promote his latest movie but that won’t do) is an oddity. Byron at rest. At least Byron in anticipation of Lent.

“For the sword outwears its sheath,” may be among the greatest breakup lines in all of literature. “It’s not you. It’s me.” We’ll never know who the disappointed was, but we can bet that she giggled into a laced handkerchief and counted herself among the blessed for having touched the famous preponderance. What a time to be a diarist… or he. I suppose she could be a he. My suspicion is that it was Lady Caroline Lamb. She described the poet as “mad, bad[,] and dangerous to know.” He broke up with her after six months because he was appalled by her sexual excesses. That’s the kind of girl we need at the P.O.E.T.S. Day bar. If anything good can come of this…

In a vacancy of famous people this guy showed up. That’s my take. There may be a cadre of Byronies that meet at conventions and wax about the guy but I’m mellow on him. He wrote. He was marvelously famous and then he got involved with some Greeks and went viral.  

I was just laughing about the “For the sword outwears its sheath,” line and my wife asked what I was on about. I told her about the cruelest breakup and she said “Yeah, F*&k that guy.” That’s about right.

Byron sucks. I kinda hate him, but he made good stuff with words in rhyming ways.

So, we’ll go no more a roving

So, we’ll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.

Here’s what Joseph Denis Odevaere thinks Byron looked like when he died.

Joseph Denis has an active imagination.

Again from my wife: “It’s a good poem, but what an A@#$hole.”