Age Matters Poem by Herbert Nehrlich

This poem is all about the advantages of old age.
There is just one.
And not everyone will end up with it.
It is called wisdom.

Written for CRA___________________________________

I've found, in forty years of studies
that something comes to fuddy-duddies.
Whereas most younger people think
that they are often on the brink
of a discovery that might
eliminate some tragic plight,
eradicate all pestilence,
but on the whole they lack in sense.

Mind you, I wore their fancy shoes
and drank their inexpensive booze,
rebelled against draconian teachers
and lusted after soft-skinned creatures.

Now, just to demonstrate a flaw
in Physics, let's take Newton's Law.
Just one for now, which, in all schools
is taught to nincampoops and fools.

This law concerns itself with motion
Doc Newton entertained the notion
that things fly following strict rules,
'twas proven wrong on cows and mules,
(it's only porkers that can fly) ,
thus was revealed a Big Fat Lie.

You see, what's in the learned texts
could well be taught by foreign sects,
I say? It's foolish to believe
what unknown agitators weave.

As you can see, the point I'm making
has the potential to be breaking
huge pillars of accepted science,
which can be done by sheer defiance.
A leaf from my own research book
I shall present now. Have a look.

What makes a child a handed-one
is it the power of the sun?
Or could it be genetic choice,
like girls, hermaphrodites and boys?

To understand you must now follow
me into a still warm and hollow,
a cave that has been named the SKULL.
Its bony cavity looks dull,
but, look-e here, my eager fellow,
this convoluted, grayish yellow
and glistening, slippery, skinless flounder,
in weight an easy triple-pounder,
it is the brain of a young dancer
and must suffice to give an answer
to why a human being might
in life, prefer to use his right
instead of left, and why the middle
is handless. I have solved the riddle.

You see, here, in the frontal portion
there, at that slightly brown contortion,
a lobe of fairly decent size,
resides, bilater'lly, like pies,
or halves of a round applestrudel
all in the colours of a poodle,
it feels no worries and no pain
and has been named the human brain.

You are aware of the nodosum,
of course, now this is the callosum.
A corpus charged to separate
and keep the demarcated state
(akin to having a proud nation
split in two parts through separation.

This happened, needlessly, I say
when at Neanderthal's Wild Bay
Kro Magnon and his many foes
were eating bisons, worms and crows.
And when the winter got extreme
team after desperate hunting team
went of to hunt for genuine meat,
came back with crows and frozen feet.

The biggest cave did have their fire
on top of an old grate of wire,
right at the entrance of the cave,
which housed the beardless and the brave.

As only crow came home it followed
that all inhabitants then swallowed
(yes let me use the term 'eat crow'
you will admit I told you so) ,
the flaky, tasteless black bird's flesh,
(today the folks in Bangladesh
think nothing of consuming it,
but say it tastes a bit like shit) .

So, as expected, it transpired
that, although absolutely tired
of eating crow the tribe contracted
a rather evil and protracted
disease which killed them, one by one.

The last one standing was a Hun.
he'd wandered in from Great Teutonia
and brought a woman named Astonia.
They moved their stuff into the cave,
he would be master, she the slave.

Now, to conclude this little tale,
I shall deliberately fail,
to give you folks elaboration,
because, in life, an education
will only come in the last pages
of people's lives, thus as one ages
accumulated WISDOM comes,
in silence, you will hear no drums.

Thus, I shall leave you with the riddle,
about the corpus in the middle.
And why you cannot just suppose
which hand will pick a fellow's nose.