Originality

Truly there is nothing new under the sun.
All I say and do has already been said and done.
My new, original thoughts were old a century ago –
Yet something still remains that the world has yet to know.

A penny for my thoughts; a penny saved, a penny earned;
The currency of words already coined which have returned.
We pass them on, we pass them around, but no one owns these things –
The same ones come to everyone, whatever Fortune brings.

Originality is the art of remembering what we hear,
But forgetting where we heard it – or so it would appear.
Clichés spring forth fully formed from the collective brain.
We can’t think of everything for ourselves, so we must join the refrain.

A bird in hand’s worth two in bush, and crime just doesn’t pay.
Opportunity knocks, the sun shines, time to make the hay.
Don’t pick at it or you’ll get stuck like that and you’ll go blind.
Mind over matter, mind your manners, what matters can make you lose your mind.

The wise learn from the mistakes of others, the ordinary from their own,
And fools never learn a damn thing though they mess up all day long.
And we keep saying and writing down what we think we should have learned
But still our children’s children will be taught by the hands they’ve burned.

What is truth? Do we swear to tell it? When will it set us free?
What is life? Do we dare to live it? To be or not to be?
Why ask why? Why the hell not? What does everything mean?
Time is short, the questions long, for ghosts in the machine.

Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do good people do bad things?
Why are we born? Why do we die? What should we do in between?
It’s not that we keep rediscovering truths that we forget –
We ask the same old questions ‘cause we don’t know the right answers yet.

Truly there is nothing new under the sun.
All I say and do has already been said and done.
My questions and my answers were old centuries ago –
Yet still we ask, and seek, and knock, and hope someday we’ll know.

© John M. Munzer
(Yeah, I know, the irony is not lost on me.)