This Is A Poem About
This Is A Poem About
the vagaries,
vagu-aries,
of words.
Sure, some show
what they mean–ice floes:
ice that flows;
ice that, even stuck, floats.
Spoon: curve cool
in your mouth, still warning
not to bite down.
Or, spoon: the warm fit
of your flank, peace beyond
the swoon.
Penis: the stretch before
the close;
vagina or -al: I/hinge/in winged.
Sorry–I say to those of you uncomfortable
with moist words
in this dryish confabulation,
but it too does its work–no one as sore
as the sorry, as sorry
as sorry me.
Then there are those words
that just won’t
say themselves,
whose sounds don’t sign
their crossroads, vowels don’t knell
whereabouts–
time.
Infirmity.
This moment tries. This–assertive,
but oh, how that long mo fools us, its promise
already at
its end.
Gone.
Went somewhere
faster than an ice floe
caught upon a spoon, cool
in your mouth, hot
at your flank.
******************************************
Draft poem for With Real Toads Open Forum.
Couldn’t resist reposing a picture of my dear departed Pearl as she jumped down onto a passing ice floe one evening in NYC a few years back. (Both pics are mine–all rights reserved.)
Tags: ice floe time passing poem, manicddaily, pearl on ice floe, poem about the vagaries of words, still feeling beastly sick poem, where did it all go
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ManicDDaily 
March 25, 2015 at 9:09 am
Smiles here and reminders too, k. Thank you.
Yes, our English is a problem language for many, and even the Brits do it wrong. Imagine our five-year-old grand-daughter who lived most all her life in London until the day of her 5th BDay last July. She still says torch for flashlight but really isn’t up to all our vagaries yet. I play word games with her and she is amazed and confounded by the different meanings. She loves to find differences but when I tell her of another still she can hardly believe.
She and our daughter went back to London and Paris for Spring Break a couple of weeks ago. It all came back to her. She was talking fluently with the French in Paris. She is keeping up with that as here she goes for a Saturday morning French classes given by the Alliance Française de Houston.
..
March 25, 2015 at 11:08 am
Wonderful words k…and timely reminders 🙂
March 25, 2015 at 1:22 pm
Such a great poem for a lover of words. I especially liked the way you brought it altogether at the end.
March 25, 2015 at 1:40 pm
Language delineated, explored like a lost continent, and the artifacts dug out of the strata are compelling and linked to us by our communications commonality–ie we all have the need to describe, to say what always seems impossible to completely say, what we think, see, feel–here the phrase ‘find the words’ seems really appropriate… fascinating sketch, k, that really seems to lift its wings in the final stanzas.
March 25, 2015 at 2:29 pm
What shadow-play and sorcery of words.. the magic when the meaning flow into ambiguity that is almost certain.. when only wet words are what they really means, like an anchor on an undulating sea…
March 29, 2015 at 2:09 pm
I sometimes just repeat words until they are nonsense. After all, they’re just made up… ~