Poem of the Day

wheedle

Today's word is

wheedle

I like this word.  It sounds like the tone people use when they are wheedling, at least, the tone children use when they attempt to wheedle and haven't yet learned how to do it more subtly.

*****
11:00 p.m. (actually, I'm posting it on Thursday, but that's when I wrote it)

Who has enough charm
to wheedle just one more day
from the calendar?

Who can extract one
more hour from this stubborn clock?
Time grants no favors.

(except fruition)

This is another inspired-by-haiku-form thing, obviously.  I'm not sure it's finished.  I kind of like it with its last line a free-floating, five-syllable parenthetical.  That last line is sort of a backhanded afterthought, which is just how we think of time when we're whining, as in, yeah, I don't have enough, but yeah, the gifts of time are completion, if such a thing really exists, and growth (but I still wish I had more).

billet-doux

Today's word is

billet-doux

First of all, this isn't a word, it's a phrase, an expression, and obviously not really an English one.  Yeah, okay, it's always good to know what these mean because writers will use them, especially writers of the past.  This one has always felt so corny to me, though.  It's another that feels to me like the person employing it must always be slightly ridiculing the subject to which s/he applies it -- or in this case, the sender or recipient.  Not sure why I feel that way.

At any rate, I am still very behind.  I hope to catch up fully with my posting today or tomorrow, barring catastrophes.  This is a nice quiet week.  Unfortunately, I saved up too many things to do during this nice quiet week!  Ha!  Hoist by my own continuing failure to understand time.

Oh, well.  Thanks for your continuing patience.  And as always, I hope my laggardliness doesn't prevent you from playing!

Later.

*****
12:00 p.m.
Uh...I just realized that this word is actually hyphenated, which of course does make it a word and not a phrase.  Doh.

I still don't like it, though.  But that's me.

More later.

*****
Thursday, December 1, 2005
So after all that public despising of this word/expression, I got in an argument later that day -- no, argument is too nice a word; it was really more like being victimized by someone else's snit -- which inspired this.  (My poetic muse is a twisted little freak, I think.)

Do not send me from the room
with the cranky syntax
of your dark mood,
or if you do,
use the prodigious talents
hiding in your heart
and that impressive cranium
to bring me back.
Craft me some light doggerel
and beam it to me over the wires
or slip a billet-doux
full of big words and naughty ones
under my hurt-closed door.
Make it silly.
Use scented paper
even though you know
it will make me sneeze.
Then respect me
for the rest of the day,
even if my door never opens
until bedtime.

lassitude

Today's word is

lassitude

A good word, but dangerous on grey days, the same way as soporific...  zzz zz zzzz

*****
Thursday, December 1, 2005
Well, I did actually rouse myself from lassitude to write the following, but then I sank back into it, hence the late posting.  What can I say?  I was inspired -- both ways.

Another boring story of failure
with a twist:

A green hand
stretches from the base
of a tree I thought
I'd killed,
snatching me from
lassitude
with no idea
what to do about it.

Poor schefflera --
umbrella tree --
I have hardly sheltered you.
I put you out in the summer
to partake of the humidity,
your species' birthright
that you only knew before
in the greenhouse
where you were born.

Then frost came,
just for a night
at a time, at first,
but strong enough
and too fast,
so fast that I forgot
to think of you,
so fast that I
didn't notice it
and failed to haul you
in your indigo-glazed pot
heavy with a whole summer's rain
back indoors to safety
before you could be hurt.

The only umbrella
you resemble now
is the kind that
gets blown out
in successive nor'easters
'til nothing's left of it
but sticks and rags.

There are only so many of
these kinds of failures
that one person
can bear to accept
in one lifetime,
and every small one after
gets bigger and harder
the later it comes.

I had to hope
I hadn't killed you,
even though it was clear
that I had.

I did haul you in --
too late, so late --
in your rain-heavy indigo pot,
and gave you a sunny window
next to the heater.
You shriveled and blackened
more, until today.

Today, at the base
of one dessicating stalk,
a small green arm
topped by a fist of green leaves
no bigger than seeds
reaches up out of
a bad death and demands
life.

quidnunc

Today's word is

quidnunc

Hmmm...not my favorite. While probably considered clever among the educated men of the early 18th century who coined this word, it feels clumsy and contrived in modern English. Unless something leaps out at me, I think I'll give it a pass.

*****

bivouac

Today's word is

bivouac

Oh, yummy, a word that's both a noun and a verb!  Fun!

*****
Thursday, December 1, 2005
Oops.  I stepped away for a minute that turned into three days.  I can't believe it's December already.

Anyway...

Small pink-nosed person,
meet me on the couch.
We will bivouac in a tent
made of ornamental
wool ponchos from Mexico,
and I will share with you
tidbits of butter pastry
just before we nap.
The TV will be our campfire,
flickering blue and crackling
with inanity.
Outside will be
cold and wet and grey.
But in our bivouac,
our luxurious, lanolin-y bivouac,
we will huddle
amidst artifacts of
our own civilization
of this place,
groom each other
with tongues and brushes,
and sleep in each other's
laziness until we
find each other in some dream
no better than this.

soporific

Today's word is

soporific

Oh, goodie, another dual-purpose word!  And another appropriate word for the season, for all those who've overdosed on food.

*****
Monday, November 28, 2005
You know, I just couldn't come up with a poem for this word.  Each time I tried, I slept.  Too suggestible at this time of year, I guess.

I did see an interesting movie last night though, Wit, starring Emma Thompson in which the word "soporific" figures quite strongly.  I recommend this movie if films about hospitals and cancer don't upset you unduly.  The main character is a Donne scholar with a hideous case of cancer, and oddly enough, that subject which has been sucking up so much of my brain space lately, the understanding of words in poetry, of poetry itself based on the words and things you know,  the understanding of things other people create being linked inextricably with the  audience member's own experience and mental and emotional openings, it's all there in this movie.  It's quite interesting, if sad, but even if the story and the discussions leave you cold, you get to hear Emma Thompson reciting John Donne which is worth the price of "admission" (uh, rental) all by itself.

Ah, well, another day, another word.  Maybe I'll tackle this one when it's sunnier and I've had more coffee.

repast

Today's word is

repast

Of course; what else would they choose for Thanksgiving?

*****
Monday, November 28, 2005
On with the parade of stored up poems from the last week, a little plate of not-so-sweet:

A meal like this,
like the one we're supposed to be having,
is called a "repast."

Repast.
Re past.
About the past.

Re-past --
remembering the past,
repeating the past,
the past again, come again,
come back again with all its
beautiful pain,
oh.

I remember you.
I remember how important all this was for you,
the building of memories,
that it should all appear correct,
that we should all behave correctly,
and that we should all appreciate
your work
and your desire.

I remember you, too.
I remember how unimportant all this was for you,
until I came along and one of us
proposed that we should resurrect it,
recreate it, fresh, untainted --
remake the repast.

And I remember him, too,
and how he came this month, that year,
and how he loved it all
and became why I kept resurrecting
and recreating
this repast
every year
with a different family.

I remember how each of you left.
I'm not sure which one is why
we don't do this anymore,
this national repast,
not wanting, not able
to let the past in again,
to let the past happen again,
again and again inside,
with all its dull shocks
and knives of steel.

Repast.
Re past.
About the past
Re-past.
The past again
and again
amen.

crepuscular

Today's word is

crepuscular

I love this word.  It isn't what it sounds like.  It sounds muscular or pestilent, to my mind's ear.  Yet it is delicate and soft in meaning.  Or it can be.  Depends on how your crepuscule goes, I guess.

*****
Monday, November 28, 2005
More brain dumping.  Just a few lines for this one, but maybe more will develop some other time.  Or maybe there'll be a place for this snippet in some future undertaking. 

A crepuscular blessing
because it's not snow,
silver rain pauses long enough
on the asphalt surface
to turn to glass.

maelstrom

Today's word is

maelstrom

There are limits to Dictionary.com's Word of the Day feature.  For example, not only has this word already been a Word of the Day (in 2001), but nowhere does Dictionary.com appear to mention that there is a real place off the coast of Norway called The Maelstrom which has been celebrated in legend and poem for centuries.  Not one of my favorite books by A. S. Byatt, but one full of fun ideas such as a literary travel agency, The Biographer's Tale is probably the first thing I ever read that mentioned this fact.  You can see photos of The Maelstrom and read more about it here, if you are interested.  It's just off the Lofoten Islands, near a town called Hell.  No, honestly.

Sorry I haven't been posting poems or responding to comments for the past few days.  I'll repair the blanks over the weekend.  I just have to get through the next two days, a veritable retail maelstrom.  Meanwhile, this is probably the only time I'll get to be online today.

Please feel free to enjoy these words without me!  I'll be back before you know it.  Cheers!

*****
Monday, November 28, 2005
Still brain-dumping.  And for this word, too, just a little haiku:

Two sparrow maelstroms
counter-swirl in descent toward
seed-dusted bark mulch.

Startled squirrels spring
away, then waddle back as
the bird cloud settles.

subterfuge

Today's word is

subterfuge

Hey!  I just used this word the other day, while visiting one of my favorite bloggers, The Chippie!  Isn't it funny where a word like this can get to?

*****
Monday, November 28, 2005
Continuing on to the next bit of mental effluvia...

In case you are interested, the show entitled "Vanitas" at the Lacoste Gallery is what gave rise to the conversation discussed in this piece, specifically the work entitled Science by Jeanee Redmond, which my boyfriend and I both loved (though his memory of it has proved fickle).

This one's not quite done yet, either, but here it is:

We regard a stack of chamberpots
made new, this year or last,
locked together by some hidden craft,
each glazed a different texture,
each displaying a different portion
of dorsal human anatomy
precisely drawn, in correct sequence,
some as muscle,
some as bone,
belonging all
together.

"Chamberpots?"
The receptionist at the gallery
is in fact affronted.
"I prefer to call them 'Art'!"

I laugh and suppress
my knowledge that something --
this thing, these things --
can be both.

Later,
you and I squabble
on this same quibble
plus one.

"That wasn't art," you tell me,
authoritatively, "though it used
techniques of art.  But those
were just chamberpots."

I start to argue.
It always feels like a trick, you know.
And you couldn't have done it yourself,
I flail pointlessly, irrelevantly.
Besides, the bothness is the point,
or part of it.
Everyone must see.  I --
And then I stop.

I see.
You saw but forgot
and misremember, I think,
and then wonder hours later
eating soup with hidden spices
and a Chinese dish which
is supposed to have both
fried egg and dried lily
somewhere in all that cabbage
and black fungus
whether the trick of art
is really subterfuge
and whether it
has to be on purpose.