In recent weeks, a friend and I have embarked on a poetry project of sorts, writing poems based off common idioms and sayings. Below is a selection of passable results from the project thus far.

Time heals all wounds

Unfortunate Physician
Time is a poor doctor.
Though he heals
Even my deepest cuts
His stitches still leave their mark.
I suppose pulling life together with string
Is inherently messy
But now these scars are proof
Of my weaknesses.

Double-Edged Sword
The work of time
A blessing and a curse
That pain so pressing
And joy so profound
Could ever lose their edges.
Or experiences blur into memory
Like a reverse polaroid.

There’s a thin line between love and hate

Between Love and Hate
Lines keep out
Lines hold in
We wait in lines
We draw them in the sand.

Funny this line
Breaks all the rules
Giving me sides
But not making me choose

Ask no questions, you’ll hear no lies

In Which I Find Complication
If ignorance is bliss
Tis folly to be wise
I hear this truth and another:
Ask no questions
And you’ll hear no lies.

Curiosity killed the cat
Yet knowledge is power.
I’m faced with contradiction.
For the Lord detests lying lips
But lies can love my neighbor.

I can’t find the absolutes
For the height of perfection
Seems to creep ever nearer when I embrace
Blindness and deceit
Falsehood and misdirection

You tell me it’s okay to cushion the blow
For time will soon efface
The wrong and brighten the right
Ends will justify means
Comfort diminish the disgrace

Yet there is something that does not love a lie
Though ease it seems to invite
I cannot banish the thought:
My call is to speak truth in love
That peace and grace may unite.

Misery loves company

Misery Demands Company
Misery changed my solitude
Into loneliness
My introspection
Into anxiety.
My self-sufficiency
Into cloying dependence.

Misery is so anxious for company
That it empties me of the fullness of being alone

I end with the beginning; the idiom that started this whole thing.

Curiosity killed the cat

Feline Wonderings
Curiosity killed the cat
Did the cat get too personal?
Ask one too many questions?
Notice something it oughtn’t?
Look through a door
Someone forgot to shut?

Perhaps the cat thought it could fix everything
If only it had the answers.

Curiosity killed the cat.
I’m not a cat.
But are we?

For Richard
The cat belonged to the neighbors.
Curiosity was just the name we gave
My grandpa’s rifle.