Tag Archives: poem about words

Driven: dVerse Poets Open Link Night

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Driven

They’re always back there in my head––
the things I could have said instead.
Sometimes not voiced for a reply,
but just existing in my mind’s eye.
Words joined in ranks turn there about
wondering how they’ll get out.
Before they start to riot and rage,
I let them out of their bone cage.

The voices murmur and they chide.
Cause trouble if they’re locked inside.
What if the mad men of this world––
in asylums cruelly hurled––
are simply writers who don’t know it.
Wild voice inside. No place to stow it.
All those entities inside
taught that they must try to hide.

Perhaps if they could let them out
to prance and scamper, whine and shout
on paper––empty, white and thin––
it would be the simplest medicine.
To fill the paper the surest way
to bring tortured voices to light of day.
To join that strange fraternity
Of those who have to speak to see.

What drives us to this room, alone,
our lives austere as any bone?
Is it the voices there inside us,
barely able to abide us,
needing to be wider heard?
To keep them in would be absurd.
I let them out for exhibition.
Free them from their cramped perdition.

And as I drift off into sleep,
I am the company they keep.
I hear their whisperings faint but clear
as they march in ranks from ear to ear.
Words rolling out in countless reams
fill my empty chambers with dreams.
When I awaken, they break their order,
wild to escape this nightly hoarder.

They jostle, elbow, push and squeeze
to make their way onto these keys.
I can barely match their pace
as they stream out, caught in the race
to be the next to flee my head
in their mad stampede to be said.
I don’t control these words, you see.
I am their transport. They drive me.

 

To play along with dVerse Poets, go here: 
https://dversepoets.com/2017/09/07/openlinknight-203/

Exchanging Words on Little Santa Monica

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photo by Georgia King


Exchanging Words On Little Santa Monica

There on that city avenue,
I watched you as I sipped my brew.
Not the woman you’d chosen to woo
as you read poetry so true,
so raw, so blunt, so rare and new,
the air around you turned to blue.
Your sad poems caressed and drew
us closer. All that motley crew.

For me, love was a new venue
that night I first set eyes on you,
but there was such a ballyhoo
around you, that you had no clue
that I had joined the retinue
of women waiting in your queue.
But as I left, oh yes, I knew.
My life took on a brighter hue.

And though you were far out of view,
your memory stuck to me like glue.
Thoughts of you both birthed and slew.
Our meeting was long overdue
that night I saw you in the pew—
there to hear the poems I grew
from words carefully chosen and few,
I drew you in by some voodoo.

Perhaps our muses conspired and blew
winds from exotic Xanadu
or Zanzibar or high Peru,
the air around us to imbue,
giving us the selfsame cue:
this is the lover meant for you,
your octoroon and kangaroo,
the heart you’ll break, the fat you’ll chew.

Of all words plucked from life’s rich stew,
the ones that I would never rue.
Never would they ring untrue.
Those words that, though we might redo them,
never could I overdo them.
The words I’d sought my whole life through.
The vow I’d renew and renew.
That one rare thing I’d finally do.

 

The prompt word today is continue. It is the first word I’ve ever found that has a rhyming word that begins with each letter in the alphabet! I discovered this without consulting Google or a rhyming dictionary, which I occasionally have to resort to when a word is especially hard to find enough rhymes for. I found 64 rhyming words. Still haven’t checked any dictionaries. They may have additional ones, but these are mine, all mine! The only rhyme that is repeated is the word “you,”

“The” Words: avenue ballyhoo blew blue boo (boo hoo) brew chew clue crew cue do (doo doo) drew due eschew ew few glue goo grew hew hue imbue issue Jew kangaroo Kew, knew  loo mew moo new  overdo  overdue Peru pew phew poo queue redo renew retinue rue screw shrew slew stew sue through true undo untrue  venue view vindaloo voodoo whew woo Xanadu you zoo

 

The prompt word today is continue.

Words Coming Together with Words

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Words Coming Together with Words

This word right HERE is copacetic.
Not rancorous, angry or frenetic,
but because it is magnetic,
other words peripatetic
suddenly become kinetic
and join it to turn epithetic.

Postscript: I can’t help rhyming. It’s genetic!!!

My mother and I wrote rhymed poems together from the time I was small. I guess she was the one who put the magnetism into words for me. Thanks, Mom.

Now I only have Kukla as a collaborator. She leaves most of the word decisions to me.

The prompt today was magnetic.

For Christine: Nugatory

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After my poem that made use of the word “negatory,” which Christine Goodnough questioned; she challenged me to write a poem about the word “nugatory,” which I admit, I had to look up.  This is the result:

Not Quite Heaven

All the streets of purgatory
are lined with words like “nugatory”­­­­
that somehow just aren’t used quite right
so share the sinner’s sorry plight
by going to an “almost place”
before they reach their state of grace.
They’re obscure words you nearly know.
You aren’t quite sure, but even so,
you use them in a sentence that
does not work right off the bat.
You see that folks are looking wary,
then consult the dictionary
to find that you meant “Negatory,”
which completes your little story
better than its near-homonym
that’s left you looking rather dim.
The lesson, wordsmith? It’s absurd
to go ahead and use a word
you don’t quite know the meaning of.
You cannot merely push and shove
any word into a place
and think that you can show your face
in realms wherein the erudite
correctly scribe and speak and cite
words in their proper domain.
So please, don’t misuse words again.
Take it easy, just go slow
until you find a word you know.
“Almost there” just doesn’t do.
Be a gourmand. Avoid word stew.

Negatory: having the nature of negation, negative.(Much beloved by truckers.)

Nugatory: of no value or importance. Useless, futile. (I admit, I had to look it up!!)

 

 

 

 

Fancy Words

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Fancy Words

Don’t we adore fancy words? Don’t we love to use them?
Still, it is annoying when some choose to abuse them.
When “geddouddahere” would do to tell pests when to go,
they use “begone!” to banish them in words more rococo.

Their need to parlay simple words, I fear I find most gruesome.
A tasty meal’s not good enough. They see repasts most toothsome.
While we argue, they asservate, assiduously stating
things that all of the rest of us are fine with just debating.

They see themselves as bon vivants, most clever and most charming,
They complicate the simplest words at rates we find disarming.
A lady we call beautiful, gorgeous, lovely, cool,
they find pulchritudinous. Where did they go to school?

“Piquant” they use religiously, though most of us denounce it.
Yes, we agree it’s pretty, but we just can’t pronounce it.
Slow music is andante, dark closets are aphotic.
As they rave on, each alloquy tends to get hypnotic.

What the rest of us get rid of, they alleviate.
They do not use contractions.  They don’t abbreviate.
They’re intent on gamboling while we’re just being silly.
They see the landscape undulating. We just find it hilly.

Forsooth, they have no wherewithal to get where they must go?
We’re all willing to chip in. We hope they don’t go slow!
They are extremely irritating, though they do not know it.
It’s not easy dealing with a friend who is a poet!!!

Parlay?  The prompt of the day is parlay?????