Poem of the Day

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.

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.

obfuscate

Today's word is

obfuscate

What a perfect word for Election Day, no?  How did I manage to leave this out of my poem a few days ago?

I'll see you after I've voted.

*****
Tuesday, 10:32 p.m.

the lawn
regains ground
only in August

fall comes
and falls
and the poor lawn suffers
obfuscated by a sheet
of gold flakes

spring comes
and springs
and a fresh earth canvas
clarifies from behind snow
and then waits
to be painted
slowly watercolored
flowery
then spotty green

on the lawn
the dirt
the snow
through the golden leaves
ghosts of children
who still live, but not here
and not as children,
and ghosts of their pets
who are only ghosts now
scream with laughter
bark and run
bicycle
rollerskate
jump
tear it all up, over and over
making not a sound
not a mark
just a faint pressure
in the heart of the gardener
fingering their dust
between seasons

harangue

Today's word is

harangue

Oh, yay!  A word that is both noun and verb.  Very exciting.

(Yes, I am a simple person with a simple life.  It's good.  Look how much fun I can have over the mere prospect of a word.)

Enjoy the word, enjoy your day.  I'll see you later with a poem I hope doesn't turn into a harangue.

*****
Sunday, 5:54 p.m.

This will give you an idea of my day.

Incessant buzzing!
Harangue of finished laundry,
begging for folding

ostracize

Today's word is

ostracize

An excellent, strong verb, a word absolutely drenched in human experience.  Hm, I'm not sure that makes sense to anyone not inside my head, but what I mean is that some words do not come to us clean.  Like scents, they trigger visions all by themselves, in this case, visions of history, visions of today, very specific images indeed of frowning faces and severe judgments.

Well, that's where it takes me, anyway, at least that's where it usually takes me.  Maybe you go somewhere else when you read it.

Besides occasionaly encountering a word I haven't heard before, which is very, very rare for me as I've been reading avidly for over 40 years, the most fun part of this exercise is always to see if a word I think about all day can change for me, or if I can find a back or alleyway door into it that shows me another side of it.  It's like holding a glass object up to light better to see the frozen movement inside, and maybe find passageways to other places in those interior shapes and colors.

I wonder where this word will take me today, what doors thinking about it all day long might open.

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

earthbound

roots of a future
from a foreign garden,
know that you were
chosen, not ostracized,
from your home sun and rain

leaves of a summer
gilded but not preserved,
know that you were
drawn to the earth, not ostracized,
from the branch

perhaps you feel this

perhaps you won't care
once you meet in the soil,
intertwine
and weave new branches
of the coming spring

(Editing Disclosure:  This morning, 11/03, it occurred to me to throw in a couple more words toward the end, so I did.  "Oh NO!  Not pure!  Not pure!  Aaaaaaaa! "  Yeah, well, tough.  I think it's a better poem now. -- s)

prevaricate

Today's word is

prevaricate

Ha! What an interesting choice for the first day of NaBloPoMo.  I have made some promises for this month, projections and assessments.  We will see if I have prognosticated or prevaricated in due time.

You know the drill.  I will try to write and post a poem -- not necessarily a good poem, but a poem -- using this word before midnight tonight.  If you feel moved to join in, please feel free to leave your own original work, or a link to it, in the comments.

Ah, it's good to be back.  I think.  I really do not think I am prevaricating by saying so.

*****
Wednesday, 10:26 p.m.

things to do before Tuesday

initiate
elevate
illuminate
elate
motivate
elucidate
liberate
delegate
officiate
prognosticate
prevaricate
agitate
infuriate
retaliate
mitigate
masturbate
manipulate
the electorate

inure

Today's word is

inure

And that would be pretty much the opposite of yesterday's word, voluptuary.  Way to mix it up, Dictionary.com!

*****
Wednesday, 9:30 a.m.
Yikes!  Totally tired, totally behind.  Please bear with me.  I'm doing the poems, I just don't have time to post them right now.  I shall update the word list, though; it's very naughty of me not to have kept that up this week. 

I will be back as soon as I can with all the stuff I've been composing offline.  Meanwhile, I hope my my big lapse here won't spoil your fun. 

*****
Wednesday, November 8, 2006, 7:22 p.m.

I found my notebook from last year and will begin posting whatever's in there that hasn't already been put up.  Very exciting!  Well, for me it's exciting. 

Inure yourself to hardship.

Inure yourself to cold.

Inure yourself to hunger,
for food and also for
less necessary things.

Inure yourself to the
certain knowledge that
if you are fortunate
-- or cursed --
you will grow old,
and either way,
you will die.

Do not inure yourself
to the raw creature reality
of other people.

Never inure yourself,
when touching a body not
your own, to either
the humid truth of
that body's biology or
the shape and size of
the person living inside it.

Do not even think of inuring yourself
to the pain of others.

Inure yourself to your own vanity
and the importuning and manipulating
subtle, snakelike voices
often sounding surface-sweet.

Without succumbing,
never inure yourself to
what gives rise to them.

chagrin

Today's word is

chagrin

Ah, an old favorite.  And you know, even though this is a foreign word, spelled exactly the same in French as in English, it's a noun, and just a single-word noun in both languages, so there won't be any tiresome discussions about appropriate spelling or freaky endings.  The meaning is quite a bit different in English than in French.  In French it is a more severe word, better translated I think as pain on a level with grief. 

I cannot hear or see this word without thinking of a Jean Redpath record I used to own on which she sang so beautifully this snippet of an old French song:

Plaisir d'amour
ne dure longtemps.
Chagrin d'amour
dure toute la vie.

On that note...later!

*****
11:07 p.m.
Duh!  I just realized that I forgot to list this word as both a noun and a verb, which it is in English.  Not that it matters for our purposes, but I think the verb in French is chagriner.  Fortunately the conjugations and participles of the English verb have all their own endings, so there will still not be any issues of agreement.

More later.  Still percolating on this.

*****
Sunday, 7:20 a.m.
How 'bout some fluffy little haikus, three to be precise?

The first of these is about Tai Sian, the new baby panda living with his mama at the National Zoo.   If you have not already gone panda mad like the rest of us, you can see him on the live "pandacam" in two locations:  the National Zoo's website, and Animal Planet's.  (Incidentally, he's awake right now, rolling around chewing on a piece of bamboo and showing us his adorable tummy.)  The National Zoo has been getting so much traffic that it is limiting the amount of time anyone can watch to fifteen minutes; however, there are lots of photo galleries and things to read.  Animal Planet, which also hosts photo galleries and reading material about the pandas, allows unlimited viewing of the pandacam feed.

As you may already know, or as you will discover if you visit one of these sites, the name Tai Sian means "Peaceful Mountain."  I am told by one of my esteemed correspondents that the cub has another name, too, around the internet:  "Butterstick."  Yes, he is "like buttah."  However, he was also the size of a butter stick when born.

Uh, pardon me for a moment.  I have to do something.

[EEEEEEEEEE!!!!  Cute, cute, cute, cute, cute!!!!  SO CUTE!] 

Right.  Here are the haikus:

Peaceful mountain shaped
like a little bear enslaves
us without chagrin.

***

Poor chagrined squirrel --
too fat now to dangle from
the feeder and steal

***

Cell phone girl raves and
paces between the houses
though we can all hear.

With neither chagrin
nor sarcasm, she smiles, waves, and
misses not a word.

______
*Thanks to Bitch, Ph.D., for the links to the links.

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).

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.