Yorrick: A Comedy of Terrors

Loan me a pyramid

Methinks I’ll create a desert

And a few things laid to waste

Hamlet’s now been discredited

His girlfriend went to his head

And the bald bard is now dead

Put that in your jest good fellow

And play with it until’ it’s finite

Cos’ I’ve got a life of my own

Dramatists an’ their princes

I ask you; who needs any of 'em?

This skull will paint the town

An' the treachery of Elsinore

A deep and blood soaked red

Life's much better red and dead

At last this poor, poor Yorrick

Wants his rich an' cold revenge

The pink champagne's on ice

An Ophelia's really quite nice

Twice a maiden for half the price

Chaining daisies for her prince

Will she jump or shall I shove

It’s jolly difficult to determine

If she’s coming or if she’s going

With half her bunnery to a nunnery

Or all her nakery to a bakery

It’s all really quite undressing

I must mismatch that doxy later

She's such a lovely little mover

An’ quite the mountain shaker

She’s wasted on that lunatic

Besotted with his hollow crown

And everyone loves the mad prince

The odd fellow’s such an infinite pest

And an absolute calamity of error

Now the loser’s love will love 

This fool who looks and acts

Like me, a prince with brains

That's my own unkind of justice

Laced with the sweetest contempt

Her father was a broken pawn

Shop keeping’s in his blood

He had madness in his method

But his ambition was quite flawed

Shallow depth betrayed his thought

He could’ve have been a contender

Not just a two bit part of a player

Upstaged by a curtain. How tragic!

Death by drapery; don’t you just love it?

His son is now a polished footman

And such an excellent head waiter

He spends his life in glass mirrors

Reflecting on his boney features

As I make sure he waits forever

So much better never than Laertes

That’s my motto for another day

He may count himself so fortunate

He was such a snappy dresser

(Do take me to your tailor

I'll deal with your leader later)

‘Tis a pity he was such an idiot

If brains were more his fashion

And skulduggery were his judge

He might have fared much better

Of characters faithful to a grudge

He could’ve lived much longer

I'll make him beg and borrow

At my very own convenience

Then dispatch him to his father

That eternally serial draper

Ashes to ashes and curtains to curtains

There’s a poetic justice in that

And it’s ever so sweetly prosaic

I might even copyright that

It’s so great to be (sic) on the up

And watch the shallow pale cast

And all their precious thought

Come tumbling, tumbling down

Life’s just great for a vicious close

Horatio; a name to conjure with             

Is now my personal skull dresser

His life is in his hand held mirror

And vanity was his saving feature

But not enough to save the creature

Vanished in the puff of a hairspray

Mist and then tragically unspoken

By all outside his fractured image

Hair today and bald tomorrow

More in boredom than in sorrow

That’s the way life goes in Elsinore

A place of lunacy and ditch fillers

Bedevilled by ghosts and spectres

Wearied by the mortality of trespass

But lovely for their dramatic effect

With dreary words in opaque coats

Whose only life was useless death

Haunted by their unbroken breath

Killing the living is as easy as pie

Deceasing the dead takes real talent

But some how I know I’ll manage

Burying them is a different matter

Perfect for the professional digger

Such simple souls with nice shovels

To gouge their own infernal trench

'Neath the crust of an all receiving earth

Their trade is part of my obsession

And their undertake is imminent

I’ll ditch them with an eternal trowel

And let them shovel hell as well

Isn’t that so me, generous to a fault

I’ll let them share a double vault

Two messengers and a message

Arrived in time for their departure

Later’s so much better than sooner

When your life’s the dying business

Overtime’s a bonus. Die one get one free!

Who’d resist such a generous bargain?

Certainly not a haggling fool like me

Most consanguineous with his deed

The King and Queen were in their dream

Before they met their nightmare      

Now they’re gone to match their deeds

And the kingdom is quite empty

There’s nothing left in their possession

A perfect state for my accession

The hollow hat suits this skull

At a jaunty and a rakish angle

And Ophelia will look great on me

Do bring that doxy closer to her maker

She can bring her chain of flowers

They’re perfect for the occasion

Tonight’s the night for her accession

Tomorrows the date of her departure

She can take her mad, mad prince

To that too, too solid earth

That gladly awaits their tenure

And I’ll be king of the castle

It’s so true; nobility fits me like a glove

And power is my one true love

Down the below and up the above

But alas and alack it came to an end

The doxy brought her princely friend

Who wasn’t quite full round the bend

Neither was he my best friend

With a daisy chain in every hand

And designs upon my scrawny neck

He stretched it ‘til it made that sound

Which left me crumpled on the ground

Rattling bones and kicking legs

Gasping for that sweet fresh air

Which forsooth was never there

And thus it was I met my fate

Both outrageous and unfortunate

The shallow earth consumed my flesh

And stole my bloody hollow bones

More in vengeance than in sorrow

They let me rot for all tomorrow

Perished by their flowery garotte

The precocious pair claimed the lot

Castles, kingdoms and a bloody moat

And all that rots in old Denmark              

All by the method of their madness

And I their puppet on a string

I do believe they planned it thus

To leave me squirming in the dirt

To take the blame and feel the hurt

A cat’s paw for the embrace of death

By the doxy and the scheming heir

My my, my, what a precious pair

Death by daisy chain, how pathetic

A comedy more tragic than divine

I’ll never be able to live it down

And they will never dredge it up

Alas, this last poor Yorrick’s gone

And all their dirty doings are done

Less in grandeur than in greed

The beggars planned the bloody deed

And all I got was this floral weed

Oh what a foolish fool dies in me

And oh what a pity rules in Elsinore

A greedy prince an’ a scarlet w***e

That’s their lot, there’s nothing more

Except this one true final score

The bald bard knew the old trap door

Concealed a fall in the rakish floor

Is everything wormwood, wormwood?

That’s the question, and there’s the scrub. 

Reviews

[Duncan Brown]

France was France come France by France

[Mifa]

I really enjoyed this poem. I enjoyed the contradiction and the sarcasm embedded in the poets voice as he drives us through what rules in Elsinore. Is this a satirical take on Shakespeare's Hamlet? If so, bravo!

However, I do have a few things to note. First, the length is, whew, its lengthy -excuse the redundancy. I would suggest you break it into stanza's of a couple of lines. Possibly a maximum of ten lines or maybe use your discretion and see where the reader can take a pause.

I also think you kind of overcrowded the flow of the poem trying to fit in too many Shakespearean lingua into it. It did make it sound exotic but it also made the narrative seem forced.

Another thing that bothered me though is the voice of the poet. Some where along the line, I kind of lost his voice to the many characters being described. I think this still boils down to the partitioning of the poem with stanzas.

All in all, I really think this is a superb poem. Funny, satirical and some worth macabre as well. But a great poem nonetheless. Keep writing.