Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Hope

The hope of men is soft and loyal,
Unfed, unsheltered, neglected.
By master's side, come fire or boil,
Though heaven itself be rejected.

The hope of men would give up its belly,
And its heart to its master's affection,
Though the cupboard be bare and the wardrobe be smelly,
With no sign of shelter in any direction.

But the aspiration of women is a voracious critter
That eats its own kin to survive,
Unsated by all that's sweet, salty or bitter,
It digests its prey while alive.

That men and women are like xylem and phloem,
With differences high, wide and deep,
Can never be doubted by any who know them
And take note of the diverse ambitions they keep.

HOPE, n.  What a man discovers on every plate and a woman hides in both sleeves.

Yeah, yeah, Mireille.  I know.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Best part of Hope,is that there is still Hope if you are Hopeless............GoodMorningWorld

Ariel the Thief said...

Yeah, Mireille, at least now we know she eats little but dresses properly. :-)

Hope, the gun with which we keep shooting down our own selves.

Anonymous said...

hope: The altar upon which the biggest charlatans preach.

Anonymous said...

HOPE, n. A feeling, blessed by the Pope, to help us cope with the dopes with whom we grope our way along the slippery slope of our existence, lest we mope, or let our senses elope at the end of a rope. Eh?

Uh, nope.

;)

Anonymous said...

That which keeps most of us trying for the brass ring no matter how many times we fall off the damn carnival horse.

Nessa said...

I HOPE the anti-female tone of this post doesn't persist; D

Jamie Dawn said...

Hope reminds me of the chick flick, Hope Floats, which is one of the many movies I love.
Ahhhhh... I love romance movies.

Something Yoda might say:
Hope not. Do.

mireille said...

oh, Doug. Nice about the digestion. The thing is, I agree with your definition. xoxo

tsduff said...

Is that then to say a woman should not harbor ambition? Or that only men offer hope? I'd say today the bitter was revealed. Here's to hoping for a brighter, kinder mood on the morrow.

Anonymous said...

Hope is the name of the little girl who has a massive infatuation (aka crush) on the Wee One. He's unaware but that, too, shall pass. But not before 1-20-09 arrives.

Anonymous said...

The thing with feathers.

Cooper said...

You had me at xylem and phloem.

Doug The Una said...

That's a fantastic point, Bear, because there's sure no money in being penniliess.

Ariel, and it never runs out of ammunition. You and Bear about have me sold on the concept;

Poobah, isn't your charlatan preaching audacious hope?

Amoeba, print that in taupe.

See, QUilly, I always blamed Salinger.

Nessa, you all planning to change?

JD, I really enjoyed sleeping through that.

Actonbell, it's been a plague of praying manti around here. That's probably what set me off.

So, Mireille, no fixing?

Certainly not, Terry. It's to say men keep their hope as pets and women train theirs for hunting. Look, Pablo Neruda wrote an ode to an artichoke. I should get away with a little misogynistic pretense now and again.

Inauguration Day, Sauerkraut? Your son took a purity pledge til inauguration day?

Emily, sore storms are commoner nowadays.

Cooper, I expected you to bite my head off and here you are all sappy.

Ariel the Thief said...

"men keep their hope as pets and women train theirs for hunting" LOLOLOL!!!!!!

You call it mysogynistic but really it is a little boy hiding away from the monster of his imagination under the bed.

Princess Wild Cow said...

Hope: The feeling immediately after the paper cut that you really just didn't do that again.

Nessa said...

Doug: Come look what I have up my sleeve; D

Doug The Una said...

Ariel, the following is the opening two paragraphs of Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God:

"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.

Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth. They act and do things accordingly."


Princess, did you really just blog again? Welcome back.

Whatever it is, Nessa, I might deserve it in the neck or eyeball.

Ariel the Thief said...

Doug, is she saying that women need to find their hapiness in their neighbourhood, so they rebuild it in their minds, while men wants to find their happiness in far away places where they cannot catch it, so they put ships on the horizon and keep their eyes on them? But I know very few people, man or woman, who actually open their eyes and want to see the world as it is, or who can take their eyes off the ships of their wishes even when all the wishes on board got rotten under the sun and washed away by rain.

:-P

Tom & Icy said...

Back in the hills where I used to live, the word 'hope' meant 'help' and they would say, "Can I hope ya?"