SOME GUY, KEATS PROBABLY: my god, sir knight
what has happened to you?
you look like some sort of lake without sedges
a sedgeless lake
if such a thing can even be imagined
no sedges on you
a sedgeless man
A KNIGHT, RUINED FROM SEX: i met a sex monster
it was awful
i got a fever from doing it
KEATS: I don’t think that’s a
A KNIGHT, RUINED FROM SEX: i met her in a seething sex-lawn
KEATS: the forest
A KNIGHT, RUINED FROM SEX: whatever
she sucked the roses right out of my face skin
and now my brow’s got lilies on it
sex is terrible but you have to have it all the time
KEATS: that’s not
you don’t have to have sex
at all
who told you that
SEX KNIGHT: she did me titviolence
KEATS: what is that
SEX KNIGHT: it’s of when you don’t want to have sex because on how it would ruin your life but you have to because sex isnt optional
KEATS: i
that’s not true
SEX KNIGHT: no it is true
even if you hate sex if you want to have it even a little you have to do it, so
KEATS: it sounds like maybe you wanted to sleep with her
even though you didn’t like her
it sounds like maybe that’s what happened
SEX KNIGHT: impossible
she magicked my leg-between parts
with her bitch wizardry
she sucked out my fever dew with her breast-mouths
and now I must die
KEATS: of what?
SEX KNIGHT: of
of
of her
cunt-bitchery
KEATS: I just don’t think I understand what it is you are dying of
SEX KNIGHT: UGH
OK
SO
I saw her in the fuck-garden where the leaf-dicks grow
KEATS: the forest
SEX KNIGHT: WHEREVER
and she had long hair so i gave her some bracelets i made
KEATS: sure
SEX KNIGHT: and then I started following her around because she looked at me like she loved me
KEATS: what does that look like
SEX KNIGHT: just that look
of like
“i can’t talk but i hope you follow me to my house and plow me up from my inside folded parts”
that some women give you
KEATS: did she say anything
SEX KNIGHT: no she just kept riding her horse and moaning a bunch
KEATS: so you gave some bracelets to a silent woman who looked at you and started wailing
SEX KNIGHT: well sometimes she sang
KEATS: what did she sing
SEX KNIGHT: oh definitely not any human words
who knows, honestly
she fed me some roots, idk what she gave me but i ate it for sure
then she said something that i have no idea what it was but it FELT like she was probably saying ‘I love you so much, come to my house and definitely kiss my eyeballs four times at least’
KEATS: so what happened then
SEX KNIGHT: i fell asleep
KEATS: then what happened
SEX KNIGHT: well I dreamed of what would happen if some pale guys were sad
they looked awful
KEATS: then what happened
SEX KNIGHT: I woke up
KEATS: and?
SEX KNIGHT: it was sort of cold out
KEATS: ok
SEX KNIGHT: and I was on the side of a hill
KEATS: right
SEX KNIGHT: the hill….was cold
so now it’s only a matter of time
KEATS: time for what
SEX KNIGHT: until I die
KEATS: okay but die of what though?
SEX KNIGHT: of
not getting it wet-edness
you can die of kissing just eyes and not getting to have sex with them you know
KEATS: you absolutely can’t do that
SEX KNIGHT: well tell that to how much I’m dying
Oh god Keats,. He should’ve stuck to only dating urns.
This is literally my favourite poem ever and this is a so wrong and yet so right.
Why didn’t the Toast exist when I was in school and had to read this and couldn’t actually articulate why it was so annoying.
If I am ever a good teacher, which I acknowledge that I occasionally am, I owe it to The Toast.
Titviolence – New band name called it.
No no, its She Did Me Titviolence. You have to say the whole thing, like A Tribe Called Quest.
How dare you make me almost choke on laughter this early on a Monday. I just got a promotion, I am supposed to be professional now, not dying over the intricacies of cunt wizardry.
intricuntcies?
A+++ portmanteau-ing, brava.
Now back to the wizardry…
I love that you wrote “brava” instead of “bravo.” Expand the matriarchy everywhere! Cunt-bitchery for everyone!
Congratulations on the promotion!
Listen to Keats being the voice of reason! Who would have thought he had it in him?
Even Keats had to get his head out of the clouds every now and then.
I can’t pick a favorite word here. There’s just too much.
“I saw her in the fuck-garden where the leaf-dicks grow” is my new favorite word.
Life goal: master the art of bitch-wizardry.
I would take this learning annex class, fer sure.
If there are light refreshments afterwards, count me in.
A wizarding class should be followed by a full buffet imo. Magic burns hella calories.
Long time reader, first time commenter.
Mallory, you have officially lost your god damn mind.
No, this is very much in keeping with my previous work and it’s also excellent.
I remember studying this poem in school, and like ‘Keats’ in this dialogue, being completely unable to figure what was going on. (This explains a lot, lol)
IT WAS THE SQUIRREL ALL ALONG. Classic Looney Tunes stragety: dress as maid, seduce knight, materialize giant hammer from nowhere, BONK, steal grain.
And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and pale beneath the oaks,
Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And that’s all folks.
oh my god, oh my GOD, i want to watch this as a skit
I mean it *could* be a metaphor for tuberculosis (or syphilis, I guess) but ‘bitch-wizardry’ is clearly better.
And after the spanking: the oral sex!
Well, I suppose I could stay a *bit* longer.
I very recently JUST used the first four lines (“what pales thee…”) from La Belle Blah Blah on my Instagram account “My Dog, My Laundry, Myself. The Dog is looking very pale on my bed with a fleece top and definitely no birds are singing.
more dick witchery! I wonder if Rand thought of herself as la belle dame sans merci
I can’t imagine Rand enjoying the Romantics. Not enough trains.
la belle pram sans le soutien du gouvernement? ugh I’m in this unenviable position where my German is good enough I don’t like to do gender wrong but my French is bad enough I can basically just guess I’m ruinING MY TWELVE WEEKS LATER BILINGUAL OBJECTIVISM PUN
frankly it was a bad pun in the first place
This seems like a safe place to admit that I spent my Friday night alone at home giggling over this other piece, which rewrites “La Belle Dame” in the language of a cauliflower recipe (& vice versa): http://waste.typepad.com/waste/2014/02/cauliflowe…
My weekend has been bookended by “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” parodies.
That’s beautiful.
That is amazing and will require much further in-depth reading. Bookmarking for later.
(But why IS cauliflower more expensive than broccoli?)
AND SHE NEVER EVEN THANKED ME.
This made me crack up laughing – ten minutes later when I got it!
I was trying to come up with some version of this joke. Thank you.
I’ve been reading horrible news about Trump and elections and horribleness all morning and on the verge of tears due to hatred and vitriol and racism but now I’m on the verge of tears because LULZ. So thank you, Mallory, for existing and for this and basically everything else you do. You win.
Made my whole Monday worthwhile.
“she sucked the roses right out of my face skin
and now my brow’s got lilies on it
sex is terrible but you have to have it all the time”
Keats, MGTOW.
Also, I have a stomach bug or the flu, and I may or may not have said something semantically equal to ” well tell that to how much I’m dying” when my roommate gently told me that my temporary delusion that I had Ebola was a bit dramatic.
I mean, every minor illness is 100% the plague. 100%. I know this. I am science. It is fact.
Oh my goodness.
“SEX KNIGHT: well I dreamed of what would happen if some pale guys were sad
they looked awful”
That’s where I lost it, haaaaaaa! I know this poem so well (from Ian Bostridge singing it) and just, A+, have an honorary degree for scholarly studies or something.
Ian Bostridge singing it
There’s a jokey letter in which Keats explains why he wrote “with kisses four” instead of some other number, and I can’t remember but he says something like “well suppose I had written ‘kisses seven,’ then it would have come out to three and a half kisses per eye instead of two.” KEATS. I still love him, after all these years.
Also, I had somehow never thought of this poem as being a metaphor for VD, but I’m pretty sure that knight’s picked up a case of syphilis or something. Or else maybe she poisoned him with those roots? He admits he has no idea what she said to him, after all. It could have been “Stop following me around or I’ll poison you to death.”
I hope she just poisoned him with roots. She was moaning because he was STILL following her around, ugh, so poison was the only thing to get rid of him.
I really want Keats to relate this story to the two monks, so they can try to draw it. But, alas, Mallory is limited to the actual western canon when she makes fun of the western canon. Plus that would probably be anachronistic for Keats and the two monks to know each other.
It was anachronistic for Keats and Sex Knight to know each other, but that didn’t stop anyone.
Can’t be the only one here who in high school was mooning slash moaning about “she looked at me as she did love” about the straight girl I was hopelessly unrequitedly in love with, right?
“Also she stole my kidney.”
“she magicked my leg-between parts
with her bitch wizardry”
I may need this as my epitaph.
not getting it wet-edness
Glad to see you got to use this line, after Slate cruelly denied it from Prudence.
The line that she ended up going with (about “flinging your genitals at strangers”) was even better, though…
It’s even better to have BOTH.
Now, it’s been a few years since I studied this poem, but isn’t this exactly how it went down?
If you’ve gone to the trouble of re-reading this Keats, then I hope you will hop over here and read some James Tiptree titled “And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side.”
Mallory, you’re reaching Jabberwocky levels of wordiness now…oh man, I just realised I’m moments away from turning into the college student who wrote to Prudie about her tattoos of her professor’s quotes.
the college student who wrote to Prudie about her tattoos of her professor’s quotes.
!!!
*googles*
Share!
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/dear_prudence/…
OUCH
how many freaking times do we have to warn people? if a faery offers you food you DO NOT EAT IT.
kids these days, taking enchanted candy from strangers and listening to loud music…
Or a god. Definitely do not eat food offered by a god.
One wee flowerlet, alone and palely loitering.
i expected to enjoy this but for some reason it freaked me out.
“SEX KNIGHT: just that look
of like
‘i can’t talk but i hope you follow me to my house and plow me up from my inside folded parts’
that some women give you”
maybe i read it too soon after the link roundup with the RoK thing
bitch wizardry
I CALL BAND NAME