Greed and Gluttony

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 These the the next two of my Seven Deadly Sins series of poems.  Pride was posted in April for the letter S in the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge.  As I mentioned then, I started out planning each to have seven lines of seven syllables per line.  Then, I got mixed up along the way, so some of the poems are seven lines of seven words per line.  Greed and Gluttony are one of each.

GREED

Never enough for those who are greedy,

they come back for more and more. 

Never sated, never full, forever empty, just

as "Dingo--Yellow-Dog Dingo" always hungry, ran

the legs off the Old Man Kangaroo.

Demanding more and more and ever more,

never satisfied, on a never ending quest.

 

GLUTTONY

Gluttony and Greed walk hand

in hand, two kindred spirits

with the same end goal in mind.

Gluttony is ravenous,

Greed is happy to oblige.

Both, insatiable and fat,

ready to gorge themselves sick.


©2022 Lisa Smith Nelson. All Rights Reserved
 
Line four in Greed is a quote from The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo, one of the Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling.  In case you count words in each line, my word counter shows seven.  I always loved Just So Stories, with The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo being my favorite.  I was passionate about dogs even as a young child, and loved that "Dingo--Yellow-Dog Dingo," and hoped he'd catch that kangaroo and get to eat! 
 

Comments

  1. Rosemary Nissen-WadeOctober 29, 2022 at 11:27 PM

    I enjoyed these. And as an Aussie particularly enjoyed the dingo and kangaroo refs. Kipling seems to have picked up some accurate knowledge, even though he was only here for two weeks in 1891, mainly in Melbourne which was already a city where those animals would not have been seen. Maybe he took in the zoo!

    I used to wonder how Greed differed from Gluttony, but finally realised Greed can be for other things than food: money and possessions, for instance.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. LisaOctober 31, 2022 at 6:57 PM

      I didn't realize that about Kipling! I suppose it's not "the thing" to like him anymore, but I grew up with Just So Stories. Besides the dingo and kangaroo, I liked How the Alphabet Was Made, at least the part with B. I loved drawing my own B. I had the illustrated one from 1952 (I must have gotten it used), with the red cover.

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