Life Sentences
 

A Senior Scribbler’s Murmurs

A proverb is the child of experience.
English proverb

American Excess. Don’t Live life Without It!

We can only go where our language leads us.

Writing takes time to stop it from passing.

Armageddon is so tomorrow.

First kiss, first book: romances that endure.

Fresh crush poems are sweet and lush.

The once ecstatic’s soon mere static.

Memories are gifts when one lives long.

Forgetting’s the cost of sluggish entropy.

Anger when old is best left cold.

Energy when eighty is unexpected hope.

Prayers to yourself are always answered.

Internet profusion leads to laziness.

Free things are soon despised.

Pain reminds me of the food chain.

The last detumescence: a male’s lost essence.

Nostalgia is so yesterday.

I finally realized why I’ve walked so slowly for so long:
terror at where the next step would take me.

Every step is a last step.

The happier you are, the sadder you'll be.

For every proverb there is an equal and opposite proverb.


Without old schools there are no new schools.

These are great, Ralph. You could probably write a poem for each one :)

Best wishes,
Fliss

Thanks, Fliss. Yes, they're sort of like a nest of unhatched eggs. I did enjoy your hatched crush poem.

I do have a theory that much written art is “proverbs writ large” (Kenneth Burke) which I demonstrate by analysis of Emerson’s vast commentary on proverbs and the structure of his essays. It’s in: Literary Monographs 8, U of Wisconsin Press: Emerson’s Proverbial Rhetoric.

You're welcome, Ralph. That's great, 'a nest of unhatched eggs'. Thanks very much for enjoying the crush poem. And that's an interesting theory! Is your work available online? :)

My work on Emerson and others was published long before the internet was a gleam in its father's eye. Large city and Academic libraries might carry the Wisconsin University Press Literary Monographs series. I do have one poem that I consciously based on the Spanish proverb "God comes to us without a bell"; the editor published it without noting the first line is a proverb:

Without a Bell

God comes to us without a bell:
God’s spell
is cast by larks and honeybees
in trees.
Their chorus, praising field and brook,
spells out His book—
one pious men may overlook,
expecting bells to say, He’s here!
But nature makes the gospels clear:
God’s spell in trees spells out His book.

First appeared in First Things

It's an Ovillejo, a Spanish form, in case you're unfamiliar with it.

Thanks, Ralph; I enjoyed reading that. The 'larks and honeybees' are particularly appealing. I was unfamiliar with the form, so thanks for the info. I'll have to try writing an Ovillejo at some stage :)