Because it's Acidic Poetry Month

Clark Ashton Smith leads us by obscure (and probably Cyclopean) passageways back via George Sterling to Ambrose Bierce, although there's little of Smith and Sterling's late-Romanticism in this piece of sour wit. It's very much in the vein of Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary.

The New Decalogue
by Ambrose Bierce

Have but one God: thy knees were sore
If bent in prayer to three or four.

Adore no images save those
The coinage of thy country shows.

Take not the Name in vain. Direct
Thy swearing unto some effect.

Thy hand from Sunday work be held—
Work not at all unless compelled.

Honor thy parents, and perchance
Their wills thy fortunes may advance.

Kill not—death liberates thy foe
From persecution’s constant woe.

Kiss not thy neighbor’s wife. Of course
There’s no objection to divorce.

To steal were folly, for ’tis plain
In cheating there is greater gain.

Bear not false witness. Shake your head
And say that you have “heard it said.”

Who stays to covet ne’er will catch
An opportunity to snatch.

Image of the Day

Kiki (1926)

Kino recently released two DVDs featuring the Talmadge sisters: The Constance Talmadge Collection and The Norma Talmadge Collection. They unexpectedly turn out to be quite a William Cameron Menzies fest. You wouldn't know it from IMDb, which lists him as the art director for Constance's Her Sister from Paris (1925) (which I thus watched first of the four movies on the two disks), but doesn't mention that he served as the same for Constance's Her Night of Romance (1924) and Norma's Kiki, screen-capped above. The other thing all three romantic comedies have in common is the impossibly debonair love interest played by Ronald Colman. The design work is gorgeous, but it benefits particularly in Kiki from the pictorial skills of director Clarence Brown. Brown loves depth effects, captured here in the mirror's frame, which reveals two lovers turning their backs on each other, although only one of them sees it.