Nothing either good or bad

Golden Shovel #1

Golden Shovel Poems. Terrence Hayes: Take a line (or lines) from a poem you admire, and use each word in the line (or lines) as an end word in your poem while maintaining the order. I’m changing the rules to make it the first word in each line.

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Hamlet

There I stood reading Hamlet, wondering about what isn’t and what is.

Is what I’m looking for worth the sparkle and worth the fizz?

Nothing I’ve seen or heard suggests that life is any more than just a quiz.

Either way, I’ve tried to cheat the test and too I’ve tried to study and learn.

Good I’ve been, but too often bad. Too often felt and followed the call of a yearn

Or the Sirens call or the magpie’s nest of trinkets, or the fire light burn.

Bad or good, mortar and wood, water and wine, black and white

But not good or right. No, I’d take lift of the cup and hold it right,

Thinking just on that cup, just on that moment and not past that night.

Makes what you will make from it. Takes from what you’ll take from it.

It will be or it will not be. It will see or it will not see. Fit it will or it will not fit

So then the end comes like the sword through the curtain and the painful blade doth hit.