Six Sixes by Hal Sirowitz
Who’s Saying He’s Lonely In six sentences, I can show you my world. Let’s be honest, there’s not much you can do in five sentences but say that you’re lonely. I’m not saying I’m lonely. All I’m saying is it’s one of my options. But now that I have only one and a half sentences left – I’m about half though with this one – I’m going to say I’m a little bit lonely. Remind me not to get too personal when there’s no room to expand.
The Heart Specialist Six sentences are all I need to tear your heart away. That is, if you have a heart. I don’t want to sound angry, but my last girlfriend didn’t have one. Or if she had one, it was definitely a fake one. It did everything a heart should do except love me. What’s the point of her having a heart if it didn’t do that?
Four Commandments Short Just think, if God agreed to the underlying principles of six sentences, there’d only be six commandments instead of ten. The whole civilization would be different. You could probably covet your neighbor’s wife, since that commandment is near the end. Though, she’s not the type that you’d want to covet. You’d better off with her daughter if you can wait a few years. If you can’t, then you should move to another block.
Not Casting a Ballot for Myself I’d like to take you beyond language where restrictions don’t matter, like the arbitrary six sentences. Why can’t we vote for a new editor who allows more than six sentences? If I ran a campaign promising to change it to ten sentences, would you vote for me? I wouldn’t. It’s better on the old psyche to be frustrated in six rather than ten sentences. Try changing it to ten, and you’ll see what I mean.
Threatening to Revert Grammatically Is a run-on sentence counted as one or two? If it only counts as one, then I can revert grammatically and have twice the sentences to strut my stuff. If it counts as two, then the editor is saying there are rules within the rules. If he won’t let me do my thing, I’ll create my own site, ‘Six Run-on Sentences.’ But then I’d have to do all the work it takes to run a website. I think I’ll do what I’m doing, just sit back and complain.
Parting Words Writing in the six sentence form made me appreciate the logo on The New York Times: ‘All the news that’s fit to print.’ Suddenly I had a revelation. A large part of my life won’t fit. You, the reader will only know the minimalist part of me. What I’m saying is that I’ll still exist after the sentences are over. Readers unite, we have nothing to lose but some added-on sentences.
About the Author
Hal Sirowitz is the former Poet Laureate of Queens, New York.
sixsentences.blogspot.com