The Five Faces of a Fool he pulls off proudly
The prince whines and whimpers loudly;
He defies the humility of heart as ever,
He falls for the false praises to no ends,
He mocks the wise counsels evermore,
He denies the evil’s counterpart as always,
He repeats easy starts and hard ends forever
With his head buried in the sand to problems
Till Sister of Charity helps him to stand up
To his follies and repent his foolish refuses
To face off the Five Faces of a fool once for all
And walk forward to what lies ahead in light.
P.S.: While I was watching an episode of my favorite old western drama ‘Laramie’, a character of a falsely convicted ex gunslinger uttered, “I am seven kinds of a fool, ain’t I?” As a lover of fanciful words, I was immediately piqued by the expression, and in the subsequent search of the meaning thereof, instead, I happened on the expression of “The Five Faces of a Fool,” because of its sheer witticism from the wise King Solomon.
It’s derived from Solomon’s fatherly advice to his spoiled crown prince son Rehobam, circa 930 BC. It’s a verse consisting of five-fold warning against the fall and the decline of the kingdom as a result of refusing steadfastly to listen to the wise and surrendering to God’s will out of audacious laziness in the guise of princely hubris.
Obviously, the prince son was not a model student of his father’s school of proverbs, but the readers beyond the boundaries of time and place have taken the advice to heart and applied it to where it is deemed fit. In writing this poem, I was wondering which face of a fool I might be wearing… How about you my dear reader? But take heart! For there’s always redemption thru hope and faith.
A Cat in the Mirror 