His Airness

We wanted to be like him, we wanted to fly, 
To soar from the free throw line, eager to try. 
It was all so unreal, the way he moved through the air, 
Like space was his own, his reach so unfair. 
He cut through the defense like it didn’t exist, 
Blinding the opposition with a hanging assist 
That came from a place where the court wasn’t real, 
Nay, some netherworld that breeds muscles surreal. 
The skill we admired, the moves we tried to mimic, 
His shot fell through the rim of the world heroic. 
 
Yet we most envied that presence of mind, 
That austere calm which elevated him in endgame 
To heights beyond the realm of mere talent, through 
The Gates of Victory, where Glory beheld his 
Mightiest ambitions, polished up his trophies in eon wax, 
Lifted him off his feet to parade through history 
Like he’d launched himself into the air for a slam. 

Scaramouche, Rafael Sabatini

This swashbuckling soap opera successfully unites elements of feeling with explosive action. Just prior to the French Revolution, Andre Louis, a polymath masquerading as a lawyer, gets into trouble after his friend confronts a member of the nobility who'd threatened to stifle the movement he'd eloquently defended. The murder of his friend ignites in Andre a quenchless thirst for revenge, sending him off into several different cliques in which he uses a number of alternate identities to conceal himself after getting in trouble with the law. First, he poses as a revolutionary orator, then as an actor in a theater group, and then as a fencing instructor (clearly with an ulterior motive). You never quite know who he'll transform into at the next turn of the plot. Even at the end we see the completeness of his ever-shifting persona, as several shocking revelations are thrown at him. 

I found this book to be shamefully underrated among the classics. How had I not heard of it until I was 32? Who knows. Perhaps it was released at the wrong time; a book set during the French Revolution being published in 1924 probably didn't muster the amount of interest it would have had pre-modernism. Even the style of writing is so 19th century that I found myself having to re-check the year of publication just to make sure. Maybe it was so derivative of stories like The Count of Monte Cristo that it couldn't sustain any of the originality that the classics are in demand of having, though in spite of that I still found it a distinct work that has a voice of its own. 

My Window

I wish I could see more out my window. 
The dull gray side of the building isn't enough. 
Beyond it there's so much more; 
So many trees, so many houses, all the birds 
I can hear singing every morning 
From the river across the way. 
I wish I could see the springtime mountains, 
So green with their diadems of winter snow, 
Way off in the distance, past my window, 
Past the boring, plain building where regular people 
Eat processed foods and binge-watch tv series. 
O how it would be nice to see through it, to 
The wonderful world beyond.  But I know that 
In the building next to mine, on the other side, 
There probably lives some other helpless soul 
Who yearns to see through mine too.