Jul 25, 2010

Confusion Reigns . . .

. . .  on the Poetry Bus

You Wonder I’m Confused . .  ?

Two Heads are Better Than One, it’s said,
but Too Many Cooks and the Broth will Spoil.
Take Care of the Pence, and the Pounds, I’ve read
Will Always Take Care of Themselves, and yet
Penny Wise Pound Foolish, - it’s counterfoil!


Smite Thine Enemy Hip and Thigh
But . . . Turn the Other Cheek?
An Eye for an Eye, a Tooth for a Tooth
while the Earth goes to the Meek?

Please keep things simple!  Surely we know
Thou Shalt Not Kill.   Even on Death Row?

And what of the way this World began?
A mysterious BANG in endless night
or a mystical whimper from the Void.
“Let There Be Light.”?







18 comments:

  1. Oh, I knew that something - extraordinary - would cross my day on this lovely Sunday morning - and I think: I found it here. (Hope I don't have to see something nasty in the woodshed, though :-), as Stella Gibbons would say.) Britta

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  2. Thank you twice! For your compliment on the poem. And I didn't know that SG coined "something nasty in the woodshed."
    All good wishes.

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  3. Zaphod Beeblebrox would agree with your first line!

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  4. I liked this - really interesting word play with clichés - you reinvigorate them and the poem is fresh and playful and witty.

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  5. Just look at all the compliments you're getting, FTSE - so richly deserved! This is when I wish I was clever and witty, but alas I can only admire.

    Perhaps hanging around here regularly will help. A dose of your own medicine, a better pill to swallow....?

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  6. Very witty and well-observed. Look before you leap/sieze the day - what's THAT about!

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  7. the nature of human exsistance.. to make the simplest things difficult to understand.. I think it makes us feel cleverer than we actually are :-)
    cool poem!

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  8. Argent . . . nice one! That pairing passed me by.
    Watercats . . thanks for visiting.

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  9. Brilliant display of how silly our words of wisdom can really be, especially if you look at them side by side

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  10. Wonderful wordplay and stunning display of the contradiction of our words of wisdom.
    It's life, Jim, and just as we know it.

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  11. You're all so KIND! Has no-one anything adverse to say about it? Repetitive? Plagiarism? Overuse of Capital Letters? Traducing the Scirptures? Corny?

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  12. What would be the point of being unkind??? Unless this is Literary Criticism 101..?

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  13. Aye. The Bus isn't Lit. Crit. It's Twit. Lit. Your profile is funny as hell. Your poem is clever too. It takes a serious turn in the last two stanzas that works very well for me. But I will ask what's up with that "it's counterfoil"?
    "Take Care of the Pence, and the Pounds, I’ve read
    Will Always Take Care of Themselves, and yet
    Penny Wise Pound Foolish, - it’s counterfoil!"
    (A wonderful bit of wit, by the way.)
    Poetry Bus Ticket

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  14. Enchanted Oak. Astute! If there;s one word in the pome I wasn't happy with, it was "counterfoil." But I couldn't hit on anything better. 'Ang about! Suppose we try "Penny Wise, Pound Foolish, - It's perfect foil"
    Obviously - as the first line says . . "Two heads ARE better than one!"

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  15. Love this poetic paradox, doc! The final stanza opens my mind to possibilities.

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  16. I can't possibly count how many times in my life so many of these pearls of wisdom were quoted to me! Lovely to read them again ~ honestly!

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  17. As I always say, you can lead a horse to water but you can't bolt the stable door.

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  18. Hi Doc, Thanks for the redirection. I enjoyed your witty poem as you knew I would.
    Yes, Christian taching re violence, at least the New Testament, well some of it, to be honest a little of it is about not judging, loving thine enemies, helping the poor, lame and sick, rejecting wealth as an end and so it goes on. However, it is difficult to find any of these sentiments in the most visible Christians. In the USA, the most 'visible' Christian nation, hundreds of people are murdered legally by their state leal systems every year. I did read that George Bush while Governor of Texas signed the death warrants of over a hundred convicts. It was apparently some sort of record.
    While President, his Christian leanings were made ridiculously clear in his phone call to Mitterand when setting up his Iraq adventure. You might enjoy this. http://staffordray.blogspot.com/2010/11/smokin-out-gog-and-magog.html

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