#323: Good or Bad?

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Hamlet, Act 2, scene 2

(a villanelle on a stolen line from Hamlet)

Nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so,
says Hamlet, and I tend to think he’s right,
but bad weather and evil persist, you know.

There could possibly be another show
that proves it’s all subjective, right?
Nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

Or are there things irrefutably below,
murder never good, war always a blight?
Bad weather and evil persist, you know.

I want to say the mind is wired to go
toward the darkness or toward the light.
Nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

But if I think a thing I think I know
that tsunamis and poverty are shite:
Bad weather and evil persist, you know.

I don’t know anymore what makes the flow
between good and bad and wrong and right:
Nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so–
but bad weather and evil persist, you know.

Published by michaeljarmer

I'm a public high school English teacher, fiction writer, poet, and musician in Portland, Oregon

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