How do you want to live your life?
A Potpourri of Poetic Curiosities
:
Wasted Time
by CD Richards
It starts when we are still so very small,
we're told we must be filled with guilt and shame;
that in our hearts there is no good at all,
and our best deeds are evil, just the same.
That not to suffer dire eternal strife,
a judgement from some tyrant up on high,
we must repent and start a brand new life,
and genuflect until the day we die.
Yet what if you should give yourself a break,
not beat yourself up for imagined sin?
Enjoy this life, just for enjoyment's sake,
don't let the pious bullies do you in;
lest wasted, self-recriminating years
unleash a flood of cataractine tears.
Author Notes
Today's word: cataractine (adj.) resembling a waterfall.
Some people fear suffering in an afterlife, I fear wasting this one.
Legion are the voices directing us to "toe the line", to regard ourselves as criminals, and spend our lives making amends. Few are those suggesting we just make the most of the one life we've been given (the only one we'll ever know), in "the pursuit of happiness".
If you're upset by the content of this poem, please just consider it as I regard about 80% of the poems on this site... an alternative viewpoint :)
Thanks for reading.
My much-treasured Christmas present for 2017 is a book by Paul Anthony Jones: "The cabinet of linguistic curiosities". Each page contains a descriptive story about some obscure or archaic word. It occurred to me it would be a fun exercise to try and write, each day, a poem featuring the "word of the day" from the book.
