Poem of the Day

exacerbate

Today's word is

exacerbate

Gosh, I feel like we just had this word.  I am high on NyQuil, though, and should not be taken too seriously about this or any other word.

It was like a lost weekend.  I caught this cold from my boyfriend, started hitting the OTC symptom suppressors, and before I knew it, I'd lost a day and a half.  There is much remediation to do here, and it is so late in the day to be starting.  I do not know if I will get back to this word today, but I will try.

Meanwhile, see what you can do with it.

*****
Thursday, 12:06 p.m.

Well, between all the coughing and snorking and rambling on and on over at my other blog, I managed to choke this out.  And no, it's not about me.  Lots of my poems aren't, even though I often like to use first person for greater immediacy. 

The Puppet Show

No, it will not
"exacerbate matters"
if you go out drinking
again tonight.

For things to be "exacerbated"
I would have to care still.
I have moved
to a colder, safer land
where things can't worsen
because they can't be felt.

No, it will not
"mitigate some of the damage"
if you come home with roses
again tonight.

See, ibid., and understand.

No act of calculated spontaneity,
no obligatory, pre-calendared
or culturally mandated
obeisance to festivity
will ever have more impact
than a single hand clapping
or clasping air.

You bend one knee
and make your apologies
to an effigy of a ghost.

But you know that.

You wouldn't bother otherwise.

Now I'm only two days behind.

proclivity

Today's word is

proclivity

Here's a fun word.  I have a proclivity toward procrastination.  I also have a cold.

Let's see what I can cough up here while on NyQuil!  Whee!

*****
Monday, 3:45 p.m.

Okay, this is the last of the posts that got sucked into my OTC cold medicine vortex.  It's such a formal word.  I'm not sure I would have found anything to do with it if I hadn't been a bit, well, not to put too fine a point on it, high.

proclivity
disorder
obsession

tell me when I
cross the line

drawn to light
in every flavor

I want to eat it
I want to drown in it
if I have to drown
if I can't just
swim and breathe and drink

proclivity
disorder
obsession

tell me where
lies each division

must be perfect
every word, every detail, always

no one can see a crack
no one
no light must penetrate
no darkness
no flaws in what I touch
no flaws in you

proclivity
disorder
obsession

tell me why
we make distinctions

tell me why we bother

tell me why we think
we know so much

there is so much

we are so small
swallowably small
drownably small
smaller than speck-small in a sea
of light that looks dark
and only appears to us
in flaws

bootless

Today's word is

bootless

Huh.  This word actually gives me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.  That may have to do with certain recent personal experiences.

Regardless, I have never used it to mean anything other than "missing one or more boots."  Apparently, it has this whole other meaning.  And I'm not sure I like this other meaning.  In fact I'm quite sure I don't like it, not one bit, though I can understand how it arose and quite neutrally, too.

I wonder if I will be able to find a use for this word today, putatively poetically or not.  Maybe you will.  Me, I'm still in the throes of my dotage...poem.

See you later, either way.

*****
Monday, 3:41 p.m.

Still rehabbing this site after my lost half a weekend with the NyQuil bottle (caplets, actually, and some of them were DayQuil, and all of them were actually generic).

I didn't like this word, as I noted.  I think the reason I disliked it -- a kind of projection maybe, not really much to do with how the word was born, I don't think -- is evident in this brief thing I made out of it.

bootless
shiftless
rootless
useless
judgment passes
from eyes to lips
with such ease
too much ease
mindless ease

dotage

Today's word is

dotage

This word feels all too relevant to my life.  And I don't even have the excuse of old age.

.(sigh)  Back later with a poem, if I remember.

*****
Saturday, 1:21 a.m.

I am so sucking at getting poems posted before midnight.  Most days, at least, I am getting the words up while it's still morning -- most days.  So as far as NaBloPoMo goes, I'm golden.  But I have so much to say on my other blog, and so many pictures to process, that I am sadly neglecting this project, which is also supposed to be good for my brain, make it dexterous and stretchy and fast.

I have the concept for this poem in my mind, but I have to go to sleep now.  I hope I work it out tomorrow, along with whatever tomorrow's is supposed to be.  Postponement, as I have found with this project before, is a very slippery slope, and I don't want to head down that way again.  But my pillow, my pillow -- it looks so deliciously soft in its little red flannel case.  And it's calling me.  I can't -- and for my health probably shouldn't, no matter how crazy I already am -- resist.

In better news, at least my thumb is healing.

*****
Monday, 3:29 p.m.

Whoa, I lost a day and a half to NyQuil.  Here's what I came up with in my cold-catching haze, though.

in a dream
I make a note
to remember a voice
its deepest echoing timbre
softened by coats in a closet
its shallowest refraction
calling lightly
across sunlit rooms

when I wake
there is nothing left
not the voice
not even a trace of
the world in which
I heard it
the world in which
I promised to myself
that I would always
remember it

and here I am
in another world

was that real then
is this real now

you, you should
have lived to have
a proper dotage
a sweet, feeble smile
an old person's smell
young small ones
to dote upon

memories of now to hold
when memories of then
would flutter away

what did we have
for lunch today, nana

you wouldn't know
but you'd remember
mama's hands
and then your own
turning dough
that rose, baked and fed
other days
thousands of days ago

today I look
into your unlined face
and you don't know
who I am
and you won't have
many more chances

and there is no doting
there are attendants
and they are paid
and there are no
young small ones

you do remember
mama's hands

you think they are here now
just around a corner
in another sunlit room

you can
hear her singing

how long will you
remember the sound

how long will she live in you
then me
then not

when will you really leave
this world

who will you be then

putative

Today's word is

putative

Now this is a word I use all the time, e.g., when I describe myself as a "putative grown-up."  They do keep telling me I am one.

Back later with a putative poem.

*****
Friday, 2:21 a.m.

I have been obsessing over details in yesterday's post at my other blog.  This is not good.  I shall probably pay for this later.  For now, though, I type the little poem I have made for this word, uh, yesterday already (geez).

your putative friends
have been asking about you

they want to know
how you are getting on
whether you're going to be all right
how on earth you could let him treat you like that
what on earth possessed you to make such a scene at the club
whether you will be giving up your club membership, because they each know someone who'd like to apply
whether you will be staying the summer
whether you've gained weight or still look "darling" in that bathing suit, the one they can't believe you actually wore to the club pool, making such a spectacle of yourself
how much he's going to pay you
if you agree that thank god there are not children
if you aren't getting a little close to the wire on that score and shouldn't you be trying a little harder not to let yourself go so you can find someone else; the clock is ticking after all
if you've heard he's engaged
if you've heard he's engaged to his secretary
how long you knew about the two of them
whether you knew about any of the ones before that
whether you know how many of them were the ones before that
if you're taking anything for the pain
if you're seeing anyone to give you something for the pain, and they can all recommend someone, cute as a button but gay
if you will ever show your face here again
if you're really the sort of person who should join a club like this
how your golf game is
whether you think you'd be up to bridge tomorrow night since there's an empty chair

forgive me for saying so, dear,
but I'm not sure these people really are your friends

inexorable

Today's word is

inexorable

Ah, what a good word, one of my all time favorites.

Sorry to be posting so late.  I was up all night.  I have a very glamourous life here in the suburbs, you know, what with all the cooking, blogging and gardening.  Just takes it right out of a body.

*****
Thursday, 12:07 a.m.

Whoops, just over the line again.  (Sorry, but I was watching the replay of Top Chef.  TV before poetry!  Busted!)

the yearning is insatiable
the loss incommunicable

the pain is excoriating
the empty space immeasurable

the shock is nearly always shattering
the march of life forward inexorable

grief

gauche

Today's word is

gauche

Oh, look:  it's the root of a noun we've already done.  Snore.  Oh well, it's a good word nonetheless.

*****
Wednesday, 1:40 a.m.

Good grief!  I got so caught up in refining my rant on feet and feminism at my other blog that I almost forgot to post a poem for this word!

When I read this word, I think of two things:

1.  The Rive Gauche, or Left Bank, of Paris where I attended the Sorbonne one summer and had a perfectly delicious time in every way -- but that's French, and we're supposed to be using this word in English -- and

2.  My mother making fun of snobs by saying something like, "I'd eat this with my fingers but that might be considered gauche," with exaggerated voice and expression, and then quickly following up with, "Oh, what the heck," and diving right into whatever it was.  In her honor, I present the following silly haikuish thing:

I would rather be
thought "gauche" and live quite free, than
"fine" in misery.

Hmm.  I think that was also the conclusion of my rant. 

Heh.

ab ovo

Today's word is

ab ovo

Not a word, a phrase, and a Latin phrase meaning literally "out of the egg."   I find it kind of interesting that the first example quote given is not even from an English-language writer, but from an English translation of a Russian writer (Tolstoy).  I wonder if the phrase "ab ovo" appears in Latin in the Russian original.

*****
Tuesday, 12:16 a.m.

Okay, I didn't quite make it back to finish this on time.  TypePad is behaving badly, and I was trying to post to my other site before midnight when that site vanished into Server Malfunction Land.

I know, excuses, excuses.  And all I have to show you is the beginning of something, what I'm not exactly sure.  I hope I have time to come back and finish this idea sometime, but for now, here's what I've got.

they say you've been trouble
ab initio
ab ovo
ad nauseam

you came out feet first
and you've been kicking ever since

the women in your family
tell her stories
and she doesn't know
when to laugh

you've been keeping your relationship
sub rosa
ad infinitum, you had hoped,
or at least until you both finished school
and escaped to the city,
far away from opinions, complications,
and stories

idyll

Today's word is

idyll

Well, that whole paranoia thing was fun while it lasted, but now I'm quite certain the randomizing robots at Dictionary.com have turned their attention to spying on someone else's life.  Still, I shall see what kind of idyll(s) I can scrape together from the blueberry waffles and bandaid peelings of today and get back to you later.

*****
Sunday, 11:18 p.m.

The Idylls of the Cook
are bound with a wire spiral
and illuminated with
ancient egg white, cocoa dust,
maybe a dab of tomato (with seed).

There are tears in the paper
and tears sometimes, too,
smearing the ink,
sometimes from grief
over the cook whose chronicles
these were before,
sometimes over a particularly
juicy shallot.

There are bloodstains
from adventures with steel.

The Idylls of the Cook
are not dull tales, and
are not recorded in a sterile volume
tucked into a slipcover
for safekeeping.

There are fingerprints
etched in beet,
and the DNA of three generations
of culinary adventurers
all stamped in with batter splatters
by cake and cookie bakers
long since educated
and gone on other quests.

The Idylls of the Cook
are rarely hidden
between their red cardboard covers.
Open to opportunity and invention
every day, right on the same counter corner
next to the blender, the toaster,
and the popcorn popper,
the open pages beckon and invite
glory.

turgid

Today's word is

turgid

Okay, now I know Dictionary.com is spying on me.  Whoa.

*****
Saturday, 11:22 p.m.

my brain feels thick,
turgid

how can it be both swollen
and empty
at the same time?

you send me information
things you need to read yourself
and can't

there's just so much
so much fear, so much information,
so much foreign language,
so much riding on the answer

and I can't even find my glasses
this morning, my coffee, my aspirin

and it's life and death

and it doesn't matter what I say
or learn as long as I try, but
I have to try, and
I can't

because my brain feels thick,
turgid,

swollen and empty
at the same time

swollen with everything in it

everything that I can't keep track of,
a swirling mess that throws
out a spark every once in awhile
from all that thick frenzy

empty of everything you need

everything that would console you,
every answer for the long road ahead
everything no one else knows either

it's not your fault
let's start from there
you didn't cause it

and my glasses are on my desk

it's a good second step
and my coffee is cold, but bracing

I can jump in from here
confident we won't drown yet