Words Pluperfect and Perfidious

18 Replies

A few days ago, I asked you to send me words you hated. Whether ugly in sound or meaning or overused or incorrectly used, you sent me those words you despised and I promised to make a poem out of them. My apologies to Leland, who made the mistake of sending me a few and who thus became the brunt of it all. Let me say that the situation is completely fictional, the fact of which Leland may rue or applaud. The truth of the matter we’ll never know. (In the poem, I’ve italicized the words you have presented to me.)

Words Pluperfect and Perfidious
(Recycled Words)

It’s amazing at the end of day
when there’s so little left to say,
they still go on with “Blah blah blah.”
Like, he goes, “Just saying, that
it’s fucking perfect that that cat
knows how to rhyme and rap and scat.”
What does this mean? Would it kill you
and would fetid cancer fill you
if you just spit the right words out
devoid of swearing, rhyme or shout?

Leland has said that he hates rap,
but then he’s just an ancient chap.
Not “awesome,” as you young folks say.
(That word used less back in the day.)
He thinks his taste pluperfect, but,

I think he doesn’t know quite what
pluperfect really means at all.
(I bet it’s the same with y’all!)
Yet still he’s very, very cool.
Nuh uh. Surely no one’s fool.
He’s pretty gray on top, but then
his uvula’s above the norm––
different to the usual form.
Shaped like one a them argyle socks,
it kicks right forward when he talks.

“Sweet!” the ladies bill and coo.
“As gigolo, we’re choosing you!”
But Leland is just bored of that.
He’d rather sit around and chat.
“I’ll kill you!” is what he just knows
his wife would scream if ever he chose
a life that was much different to
the life with her he always knew.
But with the ladies texting him,
and pulling at him shirt and limb,
it is impossible to choose
his old life’s slow dependable ooze
over a life so huge and sweet
with all the new gals he might meet.

Then his wife bellers out “As if!”
and waves a fist all coiled and stiff,
suggesting senseless violence
were he to choose pluperfect tense
to describe their perfect marriage
of baking bread and baby carriage.
So his life’s sentence he will parse
sittlng right here on his arse.
Over new love, he will choose
both less and fewer, and drink more booze.

(You can see my solicitation for words HERE.)

18 thoughts on “Words Pluperfect and Perfidious”

  4. Mary Francis McNinch

    This is Great!! After I spend a little time with my dictionary, I will have picked up 4 new bad and/ or overused words. I can’t say much more than that. You have banned all of my descriptive words. As my Mother and Aunt would say, It’s too much! It’s just too much! (love it )

    Like

    Reply ↓
    1. lifelessons Post author

      Ha. A few people gave words that I’d used in the prompt itself. Didn’t I say I wanted to hear words you hated? Someone used “hate” as the word they most hated. How confusing is that?

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply ↓
    1. lifelessons Post author

      Oh Helen. Were you put in this world to make me feel good about such silly projects? Kurt Vonnegut once said we were born in this world to fart around and I fear I’m demonstrating it, but so fun.

      Like

      Reply ↓
  7. Christine Goodnough

    What an amazing put-together, Judy! This must have taken you hours.

    For me, back in the day is a fairly new usage for an old expression. (Or maybe it’s been slow to catch on up here?) I hear it often nowadays, but back in the days when I worked at a donut shop (15 years ago), I never heard it — and I certainly never heard it growing up. Years ago, when I was young, or back in the good old days we often heard.

    Like

    Reply ↓
    1. lifelessons Post author

      It’s an oldie but recently people have taken to using it again. I’d just noticed that several people have used it in comments and then Marilyn gave it as a phrase she is tired of hearing…

      Like

      Reply ↓
  8. Leland Olson Hoel

    I must say thank you, I think, to Judy “the worlds wonder working word woman.”
    I don’t know how I missed your post. The cleaning lady must have left my ventilator unpluged for a couple days. I thought I was pluperfect many years ago when I first discovered ” You can lead a whore to culture but you can’t make her think!” My nature has been perfidious ever since. Today’s booze is just a nostalgic ruse.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓

Leave a reply to lifelessons Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.