Today's word is
Ha! Appropriate!
*****
Saturday, 8:58 a.m.
We are on Day 2 of my boyfriend's Birthday Festival Weekend. Consequently, my time is somewhat short. Then there's the cake I made ("German's sweet chocolate" variety, by request, only I tweaked it and used a Green & Black's organic, 70%-cocoa chocolate bar dark mixed with unsweetened chocolate in a 3-1 ratio, put coconut/pecan goo only between the layers, and then deeply enrobed the entire thing in dark fudge frosting) which has been battling my pancreas for control of my consciousness ever since I began mixing the batter Thursday night. And what a batter it was, with all that butter and thick, creamy buttermilk, that beautiful silken texture, and that exquisite rose beige color -- I could have served it unbaked as a pale mousse, and no one would have been the wiser.
Uh, anyway, all in all, I only managed to write down a third or so of the poem I have going in my head for this word. I don't really want to just put up that third, because where it ends right now is just too wrong. I shall put up the rest when I have it typed, maybe sometime today (doubtful; we're going on a road trip, weather permitting), maybe tomorrow. I apologize for cheating on my own exercise. Fortunately, though, I don't think anyone's awaiting the posting of this poem with baited breath!
Meanwhile, I'll go ahead and put up today's word, and see you anon.
*****
Sunday, 1:45 p.m.
Hmmm...I'm not sure this is even remotely in keeping with the exercise anymore, but I'm going to post it anyway. Here's what happened.
I got an idea for this poem while at a concert I took my sweetie to on Friday night. I thought the idea was whole. I started to type it into my text editing software, but then I got distracted by the Birthday Boy, the Birthday Cake, and the pancreatically insisted Blessed Repose. The next day was even busier, but I kept the poem in my head, sort of turning it over and over like a toy, trying to remember all the details while still reflexively playing with it. Today I have a window in which I'm supposed to be doing laundry and dishes and plugging bulbs crocus into the lawn so March won't suck, but I'm writing stuff down instead because I'm so overdue.
So I'm sitting here writing in the next third of this poem, and then suddenly some other stuff just takes it over. Stuff I hadn't really thought of before. And now I can't remember what I meant the second and third parts of this to be originally, because all that's in my head is what it is now.
So, uh, this is kind of cheating. Again. But this is what it turned into. I hope it's been worth the wait, and the lapse in the rules.
(Oh, and if anyone was holding their breath -- though I hope no one was -- I hope at least that they were bating it, as in 'bating, as in abating -- not "baiting" it. "Baiting" it would give you worm breath. Yucky.)
Surely someone's lexicon
contains a word for
a musician so old
you can see his skull,
translucent like an egg
beneath a fluff of grey candy floss,
so old this may be his last performance,
so old he's played this piece of music
eight hundred times before
and you can hear that
in how he's playing it now,
but inside
he feels no different from you,
no more frail or close to death
than you,
musing in the dark
about how much longer
he can go on.
What is that word?
There's got to be a word.
Surely someone's lexicon
contains a word for
that part of the conversation
where it turns from being
companionable into something
adversarial, where you are
all at once threatened
by something someone has said
by something someone has not understood
by something someone has said back
to you all wrong and convoluted,
not at all how you meant,
you think,
so that now you feel
like you have to win
even though it's not a contest
and the other person just wants you
to see that she
really does understand
just in different words
and maybe even better because she's older
and can see past a point where you can see,
but in any event is grateful for
the conversation,
the connection,
for what she's learning from you
even though her total knowledge is greater
than yours,
just different,
even while you are quite sure
she hasn't and isn't and thinks
she knows more than you
about just everything
and you now have to school her.
What's that word?
There's got to be a word.
Surely someone's lexicon
contains a word for
that place in your life
where you've forgotten most
of what you learned in school,
but you're still learning,
yet you still know,
and you want to tell that girl,
that young one older than you
who's stressing herself sick
not to worry so much,
just to let go of judgment,
so much judgment,
but part of what you know is that
she will not listen,
that she was raised to value judgment,
that it's the pillar on which she's
built her life,
her credibility
to herself and others,
and you know that if you tell her
she cannot listen
because then she won't have anything
because nothing in her life has prepared her
to see what else she has
besides judgment,
which she has to feel is unerring
even though you know so well
that no one's is,
and now maybe
the sickness will be her teacher
better than you can be
and you just have to let it happen
even if it kills her
in order to teach her
anything at all.
What's that word?
There's got to be a word.
Someone smarter and older
than I am once said when she
was younger than I am now
that we have lots of words
for things that are important to us.
Someone somewhere has a language
with a lexicon
that has all this stuff in it
about getting older
and getting smarter
and not getting smarter
and not feeling older
and knowing nothing
while having so much to teach.
Someone has to.
It's half our lives.
Of course, this could still use some editing. But then that wouldn't be in keeping with the exercise, right?
heh heh
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