Watching Notre Dame Cathedral Burn On Television

I went to a community college where I was very fortunate to study with a group of professors who had all started there in 1965 when it opened. They included the actor Aidan Quinn's father, Michael, who was just one helluva good professor. I studied Shakespeare, poetry, short stories, and classics with him. He had been forced to commit entire Shakespeare plays to memory as a student at Trinity. He knew these pieces inside out. All of this for $15 dollars a credit hour. Best of all, he was very generous with his time, and often entertained my dumb-ass as I asked him endless questions about what we had just talked about in class. 

Notre Dame Cathedral is burning this afternoon. Unlike many people, I have no conflict about my feelings about this. Nor will I apologize for them. 

Many of the English professors at that time had studied with the Jesuits at schools like Loyola. It was an education in education to see how they approached texts by authors whose backgrounds and ideologies clearly were in juxtaposition to their own. In general I never remember religion being injected into any of the lectures, nor do I feel I was ever punished for expressing clearly divergent viewpoints. 

One of the poems I remember vividly from X.J. Kennedy's poetry textbook came back strong and clear today as I watched the spire of the cathedral collapse. 

The Cathedral Is
John Ashbery

Slated for demolition.

I remember taking an almost absurd amount of satisfaction in choosing that as one of the poems I would explicate on one of our essay exams, and vented on my feelings for organized religion, specifically the Inquisition and Crusades. 

I got an A. We never discussed it in his office. 

Today I wrote a choppy poem about my initial feelings as I watched on the news. 

Watching Notre Dame Burn On Television

Eternal adversary of my intellect.

Stripper of my flesh.

Boiler of my bones.

Kneecapper of my dreams.

It is my turn now to be inquisitive.

To wonder if it was your god

Who was blinded to your cruelty,

Or if your god blinded you with His cruelty,

Or both. Either way,

May my mercy and compassion stretch

Further than the spines

Of my ancestors

On your rack of ignorance.

-Thomas L. Vaultonburg

     -Thomas L. Vaultonburg

A monostich is a poem that consists of only one line 

The Body of Richard III Exhumed, Then Re-Buried as a Vampire

Those who adhere to the conspiracy theory that Richard III never really died, but became a vampire and has spent the last five centuries secretly pulling the strings of international finance, were dealt a serious setback when archaeologists announced that the skeleton discovered beneath a parking lot in Leicester was, in fact, Richard III.

Yes. A parking lot.

The last Plantagenet king of England spent more than 500 years underneath a place where people parked their cars.

Richard was killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field on August 22, 1485, ending both his reign and, for practical purposes, the Wars of the Roses. Henry Tudor took the throne as Henry VII, and Richard subsequently received one of history's least flattering public-relations campaigns.

The skeleton discovered in Leicester showed that Richard did have a pronounced spinal curvature caused by scoliosis. It also revealed numerous battle injuries, including catastrophic wounds to the skull.

Researchers found additional injuries that may have been inflicted after death, including a wound to the pelvis.

So perhaps Shakespeare wasn't entirely responsible for the stick-up-the-ass problem.

Was Richard III Really the Monster Shakespeare Made Him?

That's where things get more interesting.

Most people know Richard III through William Shakespeare's play, where Richard is one of literature's great villains: scheming, murderous, physically deformed and cheerfully willing to eliminate anybody standing between himself and the throne.

But Shakespeare wrote Richard III more than a century after Richard died and during the reign of the Tudor dynasty—the family that had defeated Richard and replaced him.

That doesn't make Richard innocent.

The disappearance of the Princes in the Tower, Edward V and his younger brother Richard of Shrewsbury, remains the darkest cloud over his reputation. Richard benefited enormously from their disappearance, and historians have argued about his responsibility ever since.

But fifteenth-century English politics wasn't exactly a Rotary Club luncheon either. Imprisonment, execution, betrayal, strategic marriage and the occasional disappearance of an inconvenient relative were all part of the landscape.

Richard may have been a monster.

He may have been a capable medieval ruler whose enemies won the war and therefore got to write the history.

He may have been both.

Richard III Gets Buried Again

After extensive archaeological, genealogical and DNA research confirmed the identity of the remains, Richard III was eventually reinterred at Leicester Cathedral in March 2015.

So the king who died in 1485, disappeared beneath centuries of urban development, was rediscovered underneath a parking lot in 2012, identified in 2013 and finally buried again in 2015.

Which would seem to settle the matter.

Unless, of course, reburying the skeleton was precisely what Richard III wanted us to do.

The vampire theory remains open.

My kingdom for something firm up my giggy, please.