Poems that you love

[Magpie]

After reading the ongoing thread about 'Talent' for the past couple of days I keep on thinking about this "Genius" piece of work by Mark Twain.

Genius

Genius, like gold and precious stones, 
is chiefly prized because of its rarity. 

Geniuses are people who dash of weird, wild, 
incomprehensible poems with astonishing facility, 
and get booming drunk and sleep in the gutter. 

Genius elevates its possessor to ineffable spheres 
far above the vulgar world and fills his soul 
with regal contempt for the gross and sordid things of earth. 

It is probably on account of this 
that people who have genius 
do not pay their board, as a general thing. 

Geniuses are very singular. 

If you see a young man who has frowsy hair 
and distraught look, and affects eccentricity in dress, 
you may set him down for a genius. 

If he sings about the degeneracy of a world 
which courts vulgar opulence 
and neglects brains, 
he is undoubtedly a genius. 

If he is too proud to accept assistance, 
and spurns it with a lordly air 
at the very same time 
that he knows he can't make a living to save his life, 
he is most certainly a genius. 

If he hangs on and sticks to poetry, 
notwithstanding sawing wood comes handier to him, 
he is a true genius. 

If he throws away every opportunity in life 
and crushes the affection and the patience of his friends 
and then protests in sickly rhymes of his hard lot, 
and finally persists, 
in spite of the sound advice of persons who have got sense 
but not any genius, 
persists in going up some infamous back alley 
dying in rags and dirt, 
he is beyond all question a genius. 

But above all things, 
to deftly throw the incoherent ravings of insanity into verse 
and then rush off and get booming drunk, 
is the surest of all the different signs 
of genius.