Time Does Stop for No One

There was a time

Before which

There was no time.

There will be a time

After which

There will be no time.

[A month ago, when I was writing the silly poem, “Has-Beens”—which contains the phrases “old hat” and “yesterday’s news”—I started thinking about clichés. That’s it! I’ll write a poem entirely out of clichés! As original as I thought this idea was, alas, “there is nothing new under the sun.” In a recent Poets and Storytellers United blog, Magaly Guerrero had posted a contest for readers to turn clichés into poems (Magaly Guerrero, “Weekly Scribblings #6: Turn Cliché into Poetry or Prose,” Poets and Storytellers United, Wednesday, February 12, 2020. Web.). In compiling a list of examples I might use for my poem, I made use of the comprehensive compendium of clichés: Lisa Lepki, “The Internet’s Best List of Clichés,” ProWritingAid, Dec 09, 2020. Web.]

Here are two silly poems:

Here is an essay I wrote last February, but it seems that I didn’t post it. (Apologies if I did and this is a re-posting!)

Here is a silly poem:

Has-Beens

Sooner or later
Everyone becomes
A Has-Been

Old hat
Behind the times
Yesterday’s news.

Have you ever been a Has-Been? 
Passé? Past your prime? 
Out of date? Démodé?

I’m a Has-Been
But I’m happy
To have been what I has been.

(Well after I wrote this poem I realized that I had been channeling Emily Dickinson’s 1861 poem (260) “I’m Nobody! Who are you? / Are you – Nobody – too? . . . .)

For obvious reasons, given the proliferation of misinformation and “alternate facts” swirling around the internet and on Fox News, I have been thinking about stupidity as of late. Here is a tongue-in-cheek essay that I felt compelled to write.

Okay. Here is another set of homophones for you to match up. (See the previous “Match the Homophone Pairs” for an explanation of this word game.) If you get stuck, I’ve attached the answers below.

This is not good poetry, but I like the idea:

Here’s another game.  

Heteronyms are words that are spelled the same but have different pronunciations and meanings, like “bow” (pronounced “BAU” and meaning to lower one’s head, or the front of a ship) and “bow” (pronounced “BOH” and meaning the weapon used to shoot arrow).

So, in this game you are given a clue for a pair of heteronyms, like “displays the gifts,” and you try to guess the heteronym answer (“presents presents”).  Got it?

(As a help, I’ve put these in alphabetical order.  Another hint:  years ago my father noted that many English heteronyms are words formed with a Latin-based prefix, and that when used as a verb the accent is on the last syllable and when used as a noun or adjective the accent is on the penultimate or antepenultimate syllable—e.g. “presénts présents”.)

— Puts together threshing machines

— To shrink the legal agreement

— Finds the felons guilty

—Leave the arid region

—People who sketch bureaus

—The bird of peace went into the water

—Confines the physicians in training

—Someone out sick with a bogus excuse

—A short 60 seconds

—Improve the ideal

—A shoeshine in Krakow

—Get a song down on vinyl

—Will not take garbage

—A toilet outlet for a Singer operator

—A crying jag

—Coil up blowing air

—Coiled up an injury

If you are stuck, here are the answers:

My wife put together a YouTube video (8 mins) of the trip we took last month in celebration of my 70^th birthday.  Highlights of what we saw include the Roman villas of La Tejada and Olmeda (3^rd-4^th cen. AD), the Gothic cathedral at Burgos (mostly 15^th-16^th cens.), a casona in Burgos where the Reyes Catolicos Isabel and Fernando received Christopher Columbus (on my birthday in 1497!),  an amazing “bubble hotel” where we stayed near Tirig, the Mesolithic/Neolithic rock shelter paintings at Valltorta (ca. 10,000-8,000 BCE; the video has reconstructions of the Levantine Art paintings from the Valltora museum because the paintings in the rock shelters are quite faded and impossible to photograph), the elaborate tomb of Queen Isabel’s parents at Cartuja de Miraflores (carved by the Flemish sculptor Gil de Siloé between 1489 and 1493), the Paleolithic site of Atapuerca where remains of early hominids and Neanderthals have been found (dating from 1.3 million to 500,000 years ago; on display in Burgos’ amazing Museum of Human Evolution), and the reconstructed Iberian town at Calafell (5^th-2^nd cens. BCE) on the Mediterranean.