IN HONOR OF SHAKESPEARE'S B-DAY

Inspired by the iconic soliloquy from Shakespeare's Hamlet

Dear Friends,

This is nothing like the usual stuff I write. There isn't a single whiff (or word, for that matter) of self-indulgent, oh-woe-is-me-read-all-about-this-horrible-thing-that-happened-to-me-like-half-a-century-ago (to be read as one run-on word).

So, if you really dig my usual schtick, you might not be so into this. Then again, you might! Anyway, I like it. 

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In case you're more of a reader than a listener-type person, here's the text. Enjoy! 

To Dye or Not to Dye or 
If Hamlet Were a Woman of a Certain Age 
by Dorothy Rice
 
To dye, or not to dye: that is the question:
Whether to continue the cosmetic charade
To attempt verisimilitude despite melanin loss, 
Or to set the colorist’s sorcery aside,
And concede time’s inevitable advance? To age: to mature;
A cougar no more; and by ending the deception demur
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks 
That flesh is heir to, ‘tis a consummation  
No beauty potion can negate. To concede, to admit;
To go gray: perchance to disappear: ay, there’s the rub;
For in owning her years, she becomes phantom, ghost
When she looses her grip on this mortal coil,
Becomes her dark-haired sister’s mother: there’s the falsity
That mocks her mature beauty;
For he, whether bald of pate or silver-haired,
Becomes distinguished, tweedy, in a low-slung roadster,
The pangs of loss, the presumed closing of a book,
The offended glances and the spurns
That the woman of a certain age soon knows,
When he himself might cling to youth unto death
With a comely young wife? who would flatter by contrast,
To have maneuvered life’s challenges with aplomb,
Yet dread obsolescence before death,
The budding barista rocks the smoky locks
The weary septuagenarian pays amply to conceal
A slight of hand that fails to rewind the clock 
For despite her efforts to disguise those hoary roots
‘Tis but a garish, smoke and mirrors pretense
Thus vanity makes cowards of us all;
Thus age makes fools of us all;
And thus the sooty proof we hold at bay
And thus the soundest answer to the question
Is subverted by this insipid glorification of juvenescence,
Is colored evermore with the memory of younger days 
And past exploits of supple limbs and streaming tresses
And moments of passion and promise
With this knowledge eschew the bottle, 
And lose the falsity. —Embrace your inner crone!
The fair Moon Goddess! Silvery nymph, ashen poetess
Be all her phases relished o’er.
 
Inspired by Hamlet, William Shakespeare ("To Be or Not to Be" soliloquy)