Poem: Shakespeare never used the word “ping” and neither should you

When you say
ping me
I want to punch you.
It’s true.
Bio break, too.
It makes me cringe.
And if I am being honest
I don’t care about your ducks or the row they’re in.
I don’t know what net-net means unless it’s being said by an excited tennis announcer.
Come to think of it
let’s not circle back
or drill down
or take a deep dive
or take it offline
or level the playing field
or create action items
and honestly I don’t care
if this won’t scale
and may I add that
going forward I would like to park this project.
And this job.
I quit.
Now.
Sorry.
I have a hard stop.

        John Kenney, Love Poems for Anxious People

 

 

 

 

 

 

A state of grace

Age has no reality except in the physical world.
The essence of a human being is resistant to the passage of time.
Our inner lives are eternal, which is to say that our spirits
remain as youthful and vigorous as when we were in full bloom.
Think of love as a state of grace, not the means to anything,
but the alpha and omega. An end in itself.

            Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

 

 

 

 

Priorities

You have to get your priorities right.
Women are around all the time
but World Cups come only once every four years.

        Peter Osgood, English footballer
        quoted in A Commonplace Book: British Heritage Travel

 

 

 

 

 

If in doubt, assume life

You may discover someone apparently dead,
and it can be difficult to tell whether he is really dead or not….
If there is any doubt whether someone is dead, treat him as being alive.

What to Do When Someone Dies
British Consumers Association book 1967
quoted in Departure(s) by Julian Barnes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Longing for Utopia

A map of the world that does not include Utopia
is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out
the one country at which Humanity is always landing.
And when Humanity lands there, it looks out,
and, seeing a better country, sets sail.
Progress is the realisation of Utopias.

        Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism 

 

 

 

 

 

Get up!

I say to the body, Up with you now,
and I can feel it struggling,
like an old hack foundered in the street.

        Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing

Remembering the Beatitudes

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.

"Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break!

Kurt Vonnegut, Cold Turkey, at online publication In These Time