Poem of the Day

galvanic

Today's word is

galvanic

Another excellent word, and I have to say, the complete opposite of vapid.  Has Dictionary.com become bipolar?  Poor little randomizing computer program.  I hope it knows how much I love it, and I hope that gives it strength.

I am very excited because today is the last day of NaBloPoMo, and I am about to catch up on all my as yet unposted poems using recent words of the day -- well, all except avoirdupois which, sorry, still just isn't a useful word for me.  But I even have a poem for this one!  (Yes.  I peeked before I posted.  Sorry.  I don't usually, but I want a tidy ending for the month.  OCD?  Okay, but just a little, thanks.)

See you in a bit.

*****
Thursday, 5:44 p.m.

the quietest change
winter slipping in on icy nights
one after another
ignites intimacy

who knew silver would prove
more galvanic than gold?
who knew ice could create
more warmth than the sun?

Okay, that's it for this month.  That also kills off my NaBloPoMo commitment as it relates to this blog.

I am so tired of blogging.  I have another one, you know, one much more difficult and complicated and sometimes scorchingly personal than this and with still one more post to go before I can put it to bed for the month.  I've been spewing and spewing for thirty days, and I am so sick of the sound of my own voice, not to mention the word "I," I can't even tell you.  I do not know if I will continue this blog past this point, or when.  I may return tomorrow.  I may return in January.  I may not be back until next November and the next NaBloPoMo siege.  It's been fun, and I think it's been good for me, but now I have a tremendous desire to do things which do not involve computers, or words, at least for awhile.

I leave you with this image, my very favorite of all the NaBloPoMo seals, created by Mrs. Kennedy herself (even though she doesn't want us to call her that anymore) just a couple of days ago:

vapid

Today's word is

vapid

You know, I've had a tough time getting poetic around the last couple of words, and that happens sometimes.  This last couple of words has been just too...I don't know.  It's not that the words are intrinsically boring; they certainly don't have to be.  And it's not that they're all sharp and formal, business attire for tongue and pen.  It's not.  They just haven't connected yet in my head with anything that carries any emotional meaning to me.

But the dictionary is like -- god help me -- a chocolate box.  Most of the goodies in there will do the trick, salve your sweet tooth, make you happy for a minute and a half.  Some are too complicated, others simply not to your taste.  Every once in awhile, though, you run across one that's an old favorite that you'd completely forgotten existed until someone held it up for you to choose.

I loved this word when I first heard it out of my mother's mouth pronounced "VAY•pid."  I have loved it even more pronounced "VAP•id."

I hope I can think of a poem in which to use it today.

*****
Thursday, 5:38 p.m.

Okay, it took me more than one day.  But I've been busy elsewhere, so I excuse myself.

Oh, vapid biology --

Oh mucous, oh hormones --

Oh drama and pretense,
posturing and positioning --

Oh, novelty that fades --

Oh birth that's always miraculous
but not always welcome
and never special --

Oh death that's always inevitable
but not always unwelcome
and ultimately so ordinary as to be banal
every time
in spite of the mystery and fear --

Oh --

redact

Today's word is

redact

Ho-hum.  Another day, another terribly unmoving verb.  Well, let's see what we can do about that.

*****
Thursday, 5:22 p.m.

I thought this was such a boring word, and yet I wrote two poems using it, one all in a gigantic reactive rush to something I read on someone else's blog, and one in a contemplative bathtime moment where the water may just have been a little too hot.  I'm only posting one, though.  That other one just isn't nice when I take it out and pop it into black and white.

And the heart skin chafes
and the blister bursts
and everything you've been not saying
comes spilling out on the floor
where you both look at it
and start to cry
and then the blaming starts
and evil cruelty which is all about vanities
competing for high ground
safe ground
ground above the mud
and rocks and shards
and all those chances to hurt
and nothing can be hidden anymore
and very little can be seen
and nothing can be explained
and nothing that is said now can ever be redacted
and you won't know what that will mean
like what happens with testimony to which the prosecutor
has objected but which hangs there anyway
right there in the stuffiness
in the airlessness
in front of the breathless jurors' faces
and every witness is also a juror
and opinions are thick
and knowledge is thin
even your knowledge is thin
and there is drama
and there is criticism
and there is support and betrayal
and the witnesses and the jurors are guilty of both
and it always surprises you no matter which you see
and in the middle of everything that flies
are still you two
crying and fighting over the broken thing
that's still there, and still broken
and you look at each other and to each other
and you don't know if you should just kill it,
just toss that broken thing away
and you dare each other to be the one to do it
so it won't be you who failed
you who caused
you who broke
and you both caused
and you both broke
and you are still there
still standing there looking at it
and it's going to take both of you on the ground
scrabbling with whatever glue you can find
and a commitment to imperfect results
and all the risks they imply
to the understanding that holes and cracks
don't cheapen but enrich
and you didn't do it to each other
you just did it
together
and that pain you feel
that's just your humanity
reminding you this is all real
irrevocable
and going to be forgiven

equivocate

Today's word is

equivocate

Sorry to be doing this so late in the day.  I did spend a good part of my writing time today catching up on previous entries.  I will plug them in and one for this word, too, after I go spit something out on my other blog for the NaBloPoMo thing.

Ta.  See you soon.

*****
Tuesday, 1:11 a.m.

Actually, what I wrote for this word is just too stupid to publish.  Since I've published a lot of blatantly stupid things here in an effort to just do the exercise and keep it going, you know this one  really, really must be stupid if I refuse to post it.  And I do refuse.  So.

I think I'll try again tomorrow.

*****

Thursday, 5:17 p.m.

you can equivocate
and think you are getting away
with something
but you will still be choosing
and everyone will see what you have chosen
and it will take your choice away

you can't hold your breath forever;
you can breathe in or you can breathe out,
and yes, there is a third choice;
you can create the third choice
of not breathing at all

and yes, a two-sided structure
can never be as stable as a three-sided one
but make sure when you throw up a third side
that it's really a side you're building
that it's really construction not undermining
that it's not just a hole you're digging
or a grave

travail

Today's word is

travail

It is not usually a travail, but rather a pleasure for me to spend a day with a word in my brain like a sweet lozenge in my intellectual mouth all with the goal of spitting out a poem whose quality is irrelevant at the end of the day.  However, it is my belief that this cold I'm getting over now is actually deriving all its green and sticky phlegm from the very ventricles of my brain, which would explain the impact on my ordinarily fun-loving creative streak, if any additional explanation besides the mere fact that I have a cold might be required.

It's also making me write long and pompous sentences, this cold.  The cold thinks these sentences are hilarious.  I am afraid of what I will think of them if I read them again when I am well.

*****
Tuesday, 1:06 a.m.

this travail
this sorrow
this day
this fight, so dense and dark and fathomless

light of last year, a memory
old photos are scabs you pass around and pick
publicly, relentlessly

make yourself stop
make yourself hope, but stay in this day
this moment

stay in this darkness here
so you can see the jewels in the cave
and the moon when we come back out
just before dawn

inclement

Today's word is

inclement

Still sick, still increasingly behind on the poetry writing.  At least today's weather was not inclement, not the slightest bit inclement, and we were able to go outside.  This was my first time outdoors, not to mention upright, in about ten days.  I curse every person who goes to work knowingly contagious, anywhere, forever, period.  No excuses.  If you are contagious and you know it, wear a mask and keep your hands soap-clean, or stay home.  Keep your crud to yourself.  Your presence at work is not more valuable than my health.  Grr.

I think I have an idea for "mollify," finally, so maybe there's some kind of glimmer on my mental horizon.  Time will tell.  Or time will laugh in my face.  Wouldn't be the first occasion.

*****
Tuesday, 1:03 a.m.

I want to visit.
I want to be there in the room
the next time it happens.
I want to help.
I want to stop the words
before they fly out and shame you.
I want to help.

I want to visit.
I want to lay a cloth across your brow.
I want to help.
I want to salve the inclement heat rising in you
before it razes all you have and all you dream.
I want to help.

I want to help.

I cannot help.
I can't get there.
I can't make you hear me.
I can't get you to feel what I now
but I can keep talking,
slowly, clearly, far away,
and I can hope.

avoirdupois

Today's word is

avoirdupois

Ha ha ha ha ha -- Someone over at Dictionary.com has a sense of humor, that's for sure.  This word following Thanksgiving?  Heh -- perfect.

The cold I still have is totally copulating* with my plans to catch up on my poetry writing for this site.  I am sorry.  Today I spent most of the day crippled by a headache so severe it felt like my sinuses had been filled with cement.  I do hope this clears up soon.  However, I also hope you are writing poems without me.

__________
* Naturally, this word is an elegant partial synonym for the word I really want to use.  However, this is a vocabulary-building website, and children often drop by looking for work to plagiarize for homework assignments.  Though I do not typically consider myself responsible for any trouble to which the malfeasance of children might lead, I do respect the idea that we should attempt to use better, higher language when communicating in their presence, better and higher than even gross bodily malfunctions of a painful nature might inspire us otherwise to use.

*****
Tuesday, 1:01 a.m.

Yeah, okay, I still have no idea what to do with this word.  Maybe some other day.  For now, I pass.

*****

trencherman

Today's word is

trencherman

Ha!  Perfect for today.  At least, I hope it is perfect for you.  Lots of people want to be or act as trenchermen but don't get the opportunity.

Eat up and enjoy.  I am still sick and still, therefore, behind on these poems, but I am thankful that these are pretty much the worst things I can say about my life today.  I hope the complaints of your own life are equally inconsequential, and if not, I wish you strength until they are and merriment along the way.

*****
Tuesday, 12:58 a.m.

Sit at the table of life
with the gusto of a trencherman
and be grateful that you can.

Count celery.
Count strawberry-flavored one-calorie sips.
Count fat grams and reps upon the rack.

But count yourself lucky
while you count what you have.

mollify

Today's word is

mollify

Oh, this cold has me well poised on that slippery slope.  If I don't take quick action, this will be the third day in a row I've written no poems. 

I suppose you could say it's time I made an effort to mollify my muse.

Maybe my muse has a cold, too.

*****
Tuesday, 12:55 a.m.

My muse's sinuses seem to be clearing.

The rage of those five
insults, given and received,
can't be mollified
with flowers or florid prose.
You must feed me a sandwich.

You must eat one, too.
Coffee.  There should be coffee.
And there should be time
so we can rest, breathe deep, and
grope our way back to kindness.

subaltern

Today's word is

subaltern

Here's a fun word I never, never use.  Seriously, I don't think I personally have ever even written or typed this word in my entire life before today.  And now I've done it twice!

It's always extra fun when a word is two kinds of word.  This one can be a noun or an adjective.  This opens up its poetic potential.

Have fun with it!

*****
Tuesday, 12:51 a.m.

Remediating, remediating, remediating.  Please forgive the gap in production.

Morning, and my sense
of joy slips from the pages
of a secret and a promise,
flies on butterfly wings
dusty with lemon feathers
into my heart and rests
fluttering
subaltern only to
all that love.

I think this might be complete, but I also think this might be the beginning of something else.  I wonder if I will remember to come back to it sometime before the end of my life.  I wonder that about a lot of the scribblings I post here.

On to the next.