[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

Welcome once again to POETS Day, that wonderous day where we do our best to usher in the weekend, Henry Ford’s greatest creation, a few hours ahead of schedule by embracing the ethos of the day: Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Dissemble, obfuscate, fudge the truth, and gleefully trespass the norms and delicate pieties that preserve our hopefully durable civilization. Nearly all means are justified by the urge to prematurely escape the bonds of employment and settle in at a friendly neighborhood joint a few hours before even happy hour begins, lay comfortably in the grass at a local park, go for a swim, or God forbid, go for a light jog. It’s your weekend. Do with it as you will, but in homage to the mighty acronym may I suggest setting aside a moment for a little verse? It’s a particularly good way to pass time waiting on friends who may not run as roughshod over the delicate pieties and were not as successful as you were in engineering an early exit.

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“Imitate him if you dare,
World-besotted traveller; he
Served human liberty.”
– from “Swift’s Epitaph” by W.B. Yeats

Though a thorough Nationalist, it was not Yeats’ wish that Ireland should erupt in violence, but he knew a Rubicon when he saw one.