No Carat, No Kidding

By TF Badilla

Poetry is dead, but verse still beats alive--and may even philosophize, entertainingly, on happiness and heartbreak.

• Language: English
• Publisher: TF Badilla
• Release date: Nov 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005867485

TF Badilla

Husband (of one! : ). Father of five. Former teacher, former brewery quality assurance chemist. Poetry enthusiast.

Book preview

Preface (A Very Short One)

Poetry is dead, but the human heart beats on in mongrel music—even as the human head hums on in first philosophies. Academic poetry is dead, but lines of verse live on in street songs—and, streetwise, celebrate human happiness and hail human heartbreak.

TF Badilla, 06 November 2021

There’s More to Life Than Self

(Show-in-Tell)

Fathers come and go

in their didactic worst with

words in loving deeds.

Enjoy life: you do

not have to be as rich as

Elon Musk to do

so. Breathe. Drink. (Water,

mostly. : ) Eat. Sleep well. And then

go in some chosen

direction away

from Self—go in some chosen

direction of love,

go in your chosen

direction to an Other.

And that is how you

enjoy life. For, it

is in the nature of life

(of being alive)

to keep going—not

only in time but in space

as well. You can tell:

the Self offers you

your Dead End—there’s only one

of Self. But Other

can come infinite:

Other is anyone or

anything not Self.

Egoism brings

you always back to your Self;

and that goes how Self-

centeredness brings you

your spatial death—even as

you live on in time.

Enjoy life: let the

Self be life’s means, not its end.

Let your Self be your freedom,

not your Dead End prison.

Fathers come and go

in their