{"id":338266,"date":"2021-02-11T06:05:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-10T20:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=338266"},"modified":"2021-02-11T06:05:00","modified_gmt":"2021-02-10T20:05:00","slug":"sweet-and-sour-senescent-sonnets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/sweet-and-sour-senescent-sonnets\/","title":{"rendered":"Sweet and sour senescent sonnets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>\u00a0\u201cThe unfortunate winter of old age is stiff through pain\u00a0and shaky life comes to an end like a water bubble.\u201d <\/em><br \/>\n\u2014In\u00a0Latin on a 16th\u00a0century drawing of the four ages of man.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\n<strong>The Unfortunate Winter of Old Age<\/strong><br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nThe unfortunate winter of old age brings stiff<br \/>\nfingers, knees, and shoulder joint pain from arthritis<br \/>\none fortunate benefit of growing old is old<br \/>\nfriends, children and grandchildren who delight us.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nWe stumble through the immensities of shaky life<br \/>\nbetween birth and death, many a slip of their tongues<br \/>\ncause hurt, harm, and anger between husband and wife<br \/>\nclimbing up and down heaven and hell\u2019s ladder rungs.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nOld age pains and problems are part of senescence<br \/>\nand the same is true for lifelong joy and trouble<br \/>\nfrom deep despair to joy reveling in pleasance<br \/>\nall puffed up with pain and pride we pop life\u2019s bubble.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nSenior winters bring more verbal slips and pratfalls<br \/>\nas we tell tall tales throwing old verbal curveballs.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\n<strong>Geriatric Rag Half in the Bag<\/strong><br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nHad a few drinks, think I can still walk a straight line<br \/>\nfrom my home down side streets for a mile or two<br \/>\nto buy groceries and a box or two of wine<br \/>\nno breakage with a wine box it\u2019s something new.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nLater I scowl above my fat chin jowl\u00a0<br \/>\ndrinking juice from a box that frustrated the fox<br \/>\nmy fuzzy mind recalls fair-weather friends and foul<br \/>\nsome old buddy boys from the school of hard knocks.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nHoarding books I\u2019ve crammed every nook and cranny full<br \/>\ndrawers and cupboards of antique junk to be treasured<br \/>\nnow my head and beard hair are as white as sheep\u2019s wool<br \/>\ncups of beer, wine, and booze are no longer measured.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nMe and my old hag both half in the bag go to bed<br \/>\nwith music and romancing dancing in our head.<\/p>\n<p>***<br \/>\n<em>Joey Connolly aka Pepe Batbon is a retired educator who taught in the CNMI, NOLA, and LVNV. He is a sonnet practitioner who enjoys stargazing.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0\u201cThe unfortunate winter of old age is stiff through pain\u00a0and shaky life comes to an&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":331236,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[26,23602,21,13843],"class_list":["post-338266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-cnmi","tag-joey-connolly","tag-life","tag-pepe-batbon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}