"Portrait of an Old Man," artist unknown.‘There are No Long-Term Consequences When the End is Near!’ by Lee Goldberg The Society December 8, 2018 Humor, Poetry 11 Comments A wondrous thing that happens as your exit becomes near, is that “long-term” consequences need not cause you fear! Bottom line: there’s no “long-term” when soon you’ll meet your savior! The construct becomes meaningless, so why restrain behavior? Melanoma matters not, go bask in the bright sun. Enjoy your favorite cigarette after the tanning’s done. Who cares if cholesterol results in heart disease? Eat that double bacon-burger with some extra cheese! Catch and cook those tasty fish from that polluted river. Drink away the hours each day. To hell with your dumb liver! Send a naughty picture to your hot neighbor’s email. You’ll be underground before she gets you thrown in jail. Grab that balding pudgy chap and yank off his dumb rug! Overdo your meds and get real high on some good drug. Practice techniques with a pro until they are perfected. Do it fast and do it slow and do it unprotected! I swear to you that I did live the things that I now preach. I can guarantee the same joys are within your reach! Just avoid my one faux pas. Don’t start at twenty-five. (I would be thirty-two today if I were still alive.) Lee (aka Rantingsenior) Goldberg is a writer who lives in Naperville, Illinois. He is retired, 72 years old, and has worked in a variety of areas including computer programming and network administration. NOTE TO READERS: If you enjoyed this poem or other content, please consider making a donation to the Society of Classical Poets. The Society of Classical Poets does not endorse any views expressed in individual poems or commentary. ***Read Our Comments Policy Here*** 11 Responses Joan Erickson December 8, 2018 LOL – laugh out loud funny! Reply Joseph Tessitore December 8, 2018 Excellent!!! Extremely funny! Reply David Hollywood December 8, 2018 What a wonderful recommendation for anarchy. Hilarious! Thank you. Reply C.B. Anderson December 8, 2018 Yes, it was very funny (as others have remarked), but you need to get the meter under control. I’m sure it’s possible, for your age exceeds mine only by a couple of years, and somehow I have managed to do it. Reply David Paul Behrens December 8, 2018 Very funny. I know it is funny because I had fun reading it. Thank you very much. Reply Amy Foreman December 8, 2018 Hilarious! Reply Mark Stone December 9, 2018 Lee, Hello. I think that C.B. and I must be kindred spirits regarding the importance of meter, because when I read his comment, I agreed completely. I like the poem because it is creative and funny; it has concrete and colorful images (as opposed to abstractions), and it has a killer ending. In fact, I like it so much that I revised the nine lines that I felt had a metrical issue. Of course, there are many ways to do this. This is just my suggestion. The capitalized words are the ones I added. The rest of the words are from the original. I also changed “did live” to “lived,” since that’s how most people speak, I believe. Here it is: A wondrous SOMETHING happens as your EXIT’S DRAWING near. THOSE DREADED “long-term” consequences need not cause you fear! THE bottom line: there’s no “long-term” when soon you’ll meet your savior! The construct IS JUST meaningless, so why restrain behavior? Melanoma matters not, go bask in the bright sun. Enjoy your favorite cigarette. LIGHT UP WHEN tanning’s done. Who cares if HYPERTENSION LEADS TO CHRONIC heart disease? Eat that double bacon-burger with some extra cheese! Catch and cook those tasty fish from that polluted river. Drink away the hours each day. To hell with your dumb liver! Send a naughty picture to THAT HOTTIE IN THE MAIL. You’ll be underground before she gets you thrown in jail. Grab that balding pudgy chap and yank off his dumb rug! Overdo your meds and get real high on some good drug. Practice techniques with a pro until they are perfected. Do it fast and do it slow and do it unprotected! I swear to you I LIVED these CAREFREE things that I now preach. I guarantee THAT THESE same joys are WELL within your reach! Just avoid my one faux pas. Don’t start at twenty-five. (I would be thirty-two today if I were still alive.) Reply C.B. Anderson December 10, 2018 Mark, If we are kindred spirits, then I find myself in good company. I think that you would make a good editor — in fact, you have already made yourself one. I don’t know why it is that so many aspiring poets find metrical accuracy so hard to master. For the most part, it simply involves being attentive to normative English speech patterns. God knows that there are sometimes knotty problems that take a long time to resolve, but, in my experience, there are always good solutions if a writer is determined to put in the time and effort. Many of your suggested revisions should be Marked in Stone. Reply Joseph S. Salemi December 9, 2018 Finally — a poem against the goddamned health-Nazis that infest our society. Reply C.B. Anderson December 10, 2018 Joe, Though health is of paramount importance, it should never be up to self-appointed hygiene fascists to decide how others manage their lives. God knows, I, myself, don’t do everything perfectly in this regard, but somehow I still manage to survive. I like this world, and I should be allowed to make my way through it without the self-congratulatory admonitions from overbearing intercessors. Reply Joseph S. Salemi December 11, 2018 Kip, it’s getting harder and harder to do that. Everywhere one turns there is some pushy and officious Gesundheitmeister telling you what you can’t eat, and what you shouldn’t drink, and how you must never smoke, and giving you unsolicited lectures on exercise and vitamins and healthcare plans and therapies. Insolent, intrusive prigs! These vermin didn’t exist in the 1950s — why do we have them now? It amazes me how out of control this sickness has become. Sane people wouldn’t dream of telling a stranger how often he should change his socks, or what kind of toilet paper to use. But they have no shame or hesitation at all in lecturing you about how you should care for your own body. And when you tell them to mind their own bloody business and get lost, they have that wide-eyed look of butt-hurt wounded innocence on their slack-jawed faces, like you had killed their pet hamster or something. Leave a Reply Cancel ReplyYour email address will not be published.CommentName* Email* Website Δ This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
David Hollywood December 8, 2018 What a wonderful recommendation for anarchy. Hilarious! Thank you. Reply
C.B. Anderson December 8, 2018 Yes, it was very funny (as others have remarked), but you need to get the meter under control. I’m sure it’s possible, for your age exceeds mine only by a couple of years, and somehow I have managed to do it. Reply
David Paul Behrens December 8, 2018 Very funny. I know it is funny because I had fun reading it. Thank you very much. Reply
Mark Stone December 9, 2018 Lee, Hello. I think that C.B. and I must be kindred spirits regarding the importance of meter, because when I read his comment, I agreed completely. I like the poem because it is creative and funny; it has concrete and colorful images (as opposed to abstractions), and it has a killer ending. In fact, I like it so much that I revised the nine lines that I felt had a metrical issue. Of course, there are many ways to do this. This is just my suggestion. The capitalized words are the ones I added. The rest of the words are from the original. I also changed “did live” to “lived,” since that’s how most people speak, I believe. Here it is: A wondrous SOMETHING happens as your EXIT’S DRAWING near. THOSE DREADED “long-term” consequences need not cause you fear! THE bottom line: there’s no “long-term” when soon you’ll meet your savior! The construct IS JUST meaningless, so why restrain behavior? Melanoma matters not, go bask in the bright sun. Enjoy your favorite cigarette. LIGHT UP WHEN tanning’s done. Who cares if HYPERTENSION LEADS TO CHRONIC heart disease? Eat that double bacon-burger with some extra cheese! Catch and cook those tasty fish from that polluted river. Drink away the hours each day. To hell with your dumb liver! Send a naughty picture to THAT HOTTIE IN THE MAIL. You’ll be underground before she gets you thrown in jail. Grab that balding pudgy chap and yank off his dumb rug! Overdo your meds and get real high on some good drug. Practice techniques with a pro until they are perfected. Do it fast and do it slow and do it unprotected! I swear to you I LIVED these CAREFREE things that I now preach. I guarantee THAT THESE same joys are WELL within your reach! Just avoid my one faux pas. Don’t start at twenty-five. (I would be thirty-two today if I were still alive.) Reply
C.B. Anderson December 10, 2018 Mark, If we are kindred spirits, then I find myself in good company. I think that you would make a good editor — in fact, you have already made yourself one. I don’t know why it is that so many aspiring poets find metrical accuracy so hard to master. For the most part, it simply involves being attentive to normative English speech patterns. God knows that there are sometimes knotty problems that take a long time to resolve, but, in my experience, there are always good solutions if a writer is determined to put in the time and effort. Many of your suggested revisions should be Marked in Stone. Reply
Joseph S. Salemi December 9, 2018 Finally — a poem against the goddamned health-Nazis that infest our society. Reply
C.B. Anderson December 10, 2018 Joe, Though health is of paramount importance, it should never be up to self-appointed hygiene fascists to decide how others manage their lives. God knows, I, myself, don’t do everything perfectly in this regard, but somehow I still manage to survive. I like this world, and I should be allowed to make my way through it without the self-congratulatory admonitions from overbearing intercessors. Reply
Joseph S. Salemi December 11, 2018 Kip, it’s getting harder and harder to do that. Everywhere one turns there is some pushy and officious Gesundheitmeister telling you what you can’t eat, and what you shouldn’t drink, and how you must never smoke, and giving you unsolicited lectures on exercise and vitamins and healthcare plans and therapies. Insolent, intrusive prigs! These vermin didn’t exist in the 1950s — why do we have them now? It amazes me how out of control this sickness has become. Sane people wouldn’t dream of telling a stranger how often he should change his socks, or what kind of toilet paper to use. But they have no shame or hesitation at all in lecturing you about how you should care for your own body. And when you tell them to mind their own bloody business and get lost, they have that wide-eyed look of butt-hurt wounded innocence on their slack-jawed faces, like you had killed their pet hamster or something.
