.
1.
Just off the cuff, I’d cap the alcoholic swill
__Before it calls your bluff and saps your will.
.
2.
The dead, although their tongues are somewhat tied,
Might know already all you might confide.
.
3.
The past, its spoonful bittersweet, doesn’t let things slide;
It’s at your bed again, saying Open wide…
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4.
The past, with its spoonful of vinegar and gall,
__Has come back round to pay a little call.
.
5. Recalcitrant Disciple
I wouldn’t go healing people’s maladies. Be sure,
__They’ll pay you back in anything but kind.
But turning pots of brackish water into wine,
__Now there’s a miracle I can get behind.
.
6.
No one’s more ignorant of probability
__Than those who pay to play the lottery.
It’s tailor-made for minds mathematically lax.
__Let’s name it what it is: the Nincomtax.
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7.
When roses give off fragrances, we’re caught in thrall.
__Are they charmed too, and feeling as we do?
And is the nightingale emoting in its call?
__Beauty and beholder, their rendezvous,
Are all intrinsic to some living harmony?
__I can’t say, I wouldn’t want to make that call.
If rose and nightingale are peddling fallacy
__The lie would be a white one, after all.
.
.
Stephen M. Dickey is a Slavic linguist at the University of Kansas. He has published widely on Slavic verbal categories, and has published translations of Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian fiction and poetry including Meša Selimović’s Death and the Dervish, Borislav Pekić’s How to Quiet a Vampire, and Miljenko Jergović’s Ruta Tannenbaum. He has published poetry in various journals including Shot Glass Journal, Trinacria, The Lyric, Rat’s Ass Review, Lighten Up Online, Better Than Starbucks, Asses of Parnassus, and Blue Unicorn.
Stephen, the first set of verses (one through four) contains words of wisdom well said and well rhymed. The second set is well presented. I particularly loved the word, “Nincomtax!” Gambling is now a national disease what with sports teaming up to take our money.
Roy,
Thank you, I’m glad you liked them. The last one deals with an issue evident in your fine poem “The Woods Have Waited Anxiously,” which was one impetus for writing it.
I have to agree with Roy. “Nincomtax” is such a great word, I laughed out loud. Thank you.
Thanks, I was trying to come up with something more original than “stupid tax” and that word just alighted on me like that bird in Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Epigrammatic verse is a genre all to itself, marked by brevity, sharpness, wit, and with a sting in its tail. Unlike haiku (which in their traditional form at least, are somewhat rigid in subject and style), the epigram is comical or satiric by nature, and also very tongue-in-cheek.
The first six here fit the bill perfectly. The seventh is more meditative, and seem to be more in the style of the lyric. But an epigrammatic voice does come in at the last three lines, which are colloquial and snappy.
Thanks, I think putting different things together is sometimes a little more fun or interesting than striving for homogeneity.
A lot to ponder on, me’s thinking, Stephen,
Of life’s curved roads, rocky and uneven.
Thanks for the reads.
Thank you, Paul.
I just noticed the rhyme—I’m not used to seeing my name in one!
Stephen, these show a personal style, especially in the use of the first person (a speaker is not always clearly heard in epigram) and obvious touches of contemporary colloquialism. It is such an approach that characterizes some most distinctive haiku writers (I think of Issa in particular), although their ways of achieving it are different, as is their usual subject matter. I wonder whether you have any preferences among these as your most successful? The group as a whole presents a striking surprise.
Margaret, I am ashamed to say that I know nothing about haiku, and I find it intimidating. Your question is also very unexpected. To the extent that any of these are successful, I could only give a non-answer by saying 3 & 4 are my natural outlook; 5 & 7 rip off Borislav Pekić and Heine respectively without anyone calling me out, so that’s some modicum of success I guess.
I don’t know whether it’s a remnant of Modernism in me, but I like and like to write things that seem to come out of nowhere and make some small point. Then again, most poetry does that.
I’m happy to see that these poets give back some
By spreading the rhyming and metrical maxim.
It’s truly delightful to see someone writing
A form so concise, so direct, and so biting.
Very nice indeed! As we say in English, “you took the words right out of my mouth.”
I just love these! Especially #3… how very and horribly true, and #7 with its glorious closing couplet… I may just buy that white lie. Stephen, thank you!
Thank you, Susan. I think we’re hard-wired to buy it.
What pithy fun–the Nincomtax! As if from a modern book of Proverbs. Great fun. A couple of things in #5 threw me though. Why be sure people whose maladies you’ve healed will pay you back in anything but kind? Do I need to get new friends or something? And why “brackish” water instead of regular drinking freshwater?
Thanks Adam, I can only refer to a passage from the novel “The Time of Miracles”, which, like everything B. Pekić wrote, was colored by his time served in a communist prison after WWII:
“For untying tied tongues will get you only a pack of blabbermouths, that is to say, backstabbers; putting the lame back on their feet will get you only a pack of the fleet-footed, that is to say, those to come after you; giving sight to the blind gets you only a pack of curious onlookers, that is to say, spies; raising the dead will get you only more sinners, that is to say, enemies.”
His satire may not be one’s cup of tea, but that just drives the point home of the risks that Jesus was taking.
As for the brackish water, if turning water to wine is a miracle, then turning bad water to wine just amplifies the miracle.
#5  tickled me the most, but I liked reading every one of them. I’m glad at least a few of us are doing this sort of thing.
Thanks Kip. Actually, #2 was a response to a piece you posted a while back that I didn’t have time to comment on.