tmesis

Today's word is

tmesis

Though you wouldn't know it from my behind-ness in posting this week, I am actually very excited about this word, which I do believe is brand new to me -- though maybe not; the SAT was a long time ago for me, and a very dim and muffled bell may have gone off somewhere far behind my left ear when I read this word and the examples of tmeses given by Dictionary.com.  I'm very excited about the poem I've been working on for it. I just wish I had time to sit down and finalize it!

Ah, well.  Soon.  I hope.  Meanwhile, what do you think?  At first blush it seems like one of those drattedly awkward "dictionary" words, as other people here have named them, impossibly unfit for poetry.  But when you ponder it a minute, it reveals such enormous metaphoric possibilities.  Do you see them, too?

Enjoy!

*****
Wednesday, November 8, 2006, 7:39 p.m.

Still going through that notebook from a year ago.  What's cool is how many poems I wrote between the poems I wrote for this site.  This exercise, even in my exhaustion and stress, really did wake me up creatively.

They say somewhere
is a giant book
which is all life
and that someone writes
in this book
one infinitessimally small word
which is each of our lives.

You blush when you think
of that time, and then that other.

You prefer to think of each thing
like these, each lapse of judgment
each "mistake," each lapse of who
you think you are,

as some kind of tmesis
in the flow of your real narrative,
but honey,
they are not.
This, too, is who you are,
where you've been,
your story,
and knowing this,
and loving this, the whole fabric,
the whole story,
and knowing that other people's
are just as flawed,
as gap-ridden and cobbled together,
and that you can
still love them anyway
are part of this story's point.