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.)