“Hatred” used to be a noun several centuries ago (when I was a kid), and “hate” was the associated verb. More and more people today use “hate” for both the verb and the noun.
Oh, and don’t forget the adjective form, as in “hate crime”.
Continue readingWritten in response to a Facebook friend’s suggestion for a hard-to-rhyme poem topic—the friend having pledged afterward to supply a drawing of said Platypus, which I have not yet seen, but am still patient about, because I’m cool like that.
by Jack Pelham
A disadvantaged platypus
Lived in a beaver’s world.
His classmates taunted, “Atta wuss!”
For he was yet ungirled.
But one day said the Beaver Queen,
“I think he’s kinda cute.”
And she went out right then and bought
The boy a mohair suit.
Written in reply to a rhyming challenge from a Facebook friend.
I sing to you, dear Orange,
Using rhymes, both true and strained.
I see you as a soringe
Shooting sugar in my veins.
But that’s not all, sweet Orange,
For I have more skill than this.
Yes, you are like the door hinge
On the door to sug’ry bliss.
You are to me a staple,
Which without I cannot do.
You’re sweeter yet than maple,
But you’re packed with fiber, too!
Perhaps I’ll write a poem a day.
My fans can say on what.
And I will then have found a way
To sit here on my butt.
The dollars, they’ll come pouring in
From fans both far and near.
They’ll clamor here, each verse to read,
And thank me oh, so dear.
Ah! That intoxicating hope that
Second Things First might actually be
A viable policy—
That too-good-to-be-true notion that,
For many vain people,
Is also the too-good-to-pass-up thrill—
There are hundreds of posts and pages here, with all kinds of material. This home page shows the latest posts, and they tend to come in waves. So if you should see lots of poetry posts in a row, or lots of lengthy articles on this or that, please don’t assume that that’s all there is to the site! You can peruse the links above to get an idea of what all is here. And if you find the site interesting, I hope you’ll go read my “About” page here.
Enjoy!
Jack
Until a person
Has surrendered fully
To his own fallibility,
And no longer supposes that
“If I were wrong about this,
I would know it,”—
I don’t think
He’s ready yet
To consider
The things of this world
As they truly ought to be considered.
They say the light from the stars
Takes a very long time to reach us,
And I wonder at how
It seems to be the same
With the light of the ancient scriptures—
So distant from us in time
And culture
And speech
That we still haven’t quite
Got it yet.
Fraught with error
And delay
And distraction
As they may have been,
I have spent these years
Generally advancing
Upon the conclusion that
Our species is prone
To clumsiness of mind,
And is yet most
Wondrously capable of rising
Momentarily into brilliance
When it suits us.
And it strikes me
That this might just be
A good thing to know
About ourselves.
The cheater will seize upon an ambiguity
In your evidence for a thing,
And resolutely take the opposite view to yours,
As if the matter weren’t really
Ambiguous after all.
