The year-end creeps, mercuries freeze,
And buzz up English dictionaries,
All in a forward gear
To find Word of the Year,
Which, for Oxford is the slang rizz—
An argot not so clear,
Froth less, bubbleless beer,
Or a cola lost of all fizz!
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Happenings |02.12.2023| word
Poet’s note: Rizz, this year’s Word of the Year, is a slang that means style, charm, attractiveness, ability to attract romantic or sexual partner, and a few more vague things as per Oxford University Press. Big deal!
She had a brain injury of sorts,
not physical or mental. just elemental.
Now she speaks
in a language that has no beginning nor end.
She speaks from a Fountain, a Wellspring.
Out pours the bewildering and the inexplicable,
words never found or lost
an idiom that passes all logical understanding
but can be grasped only on the wing.
An ephemeral argot,
flickering like a single Mayfly
in a tempest of vying articulations.
Her speech is beautiful even when ugly,
it is poetry.
They keep asking her to slow down
but she is way ahead of them -
she always will be.
Temporal Dilettante Journalist
David J Walker
no-thing need not name the nameless
breaks the morning in disguise
shakes the shame and wakes the shameless
quench tormented turbid eyes
the bootless errand realized
who shakes the hand but shuns the banquet
a polymath of nullity
a picnic spread on follies blanket
the argot of a fervent plea
omnifarious frivolity
dante sings symphonic anthems
measured meters latin chants
pardons plied to paphian sanctions
the queen retorts in satin rants
a paupers portion the monarch grants
bemoans the message minimalized
Back then, time ticked loudly,
clocks ran faster than chipmunks.
Young bones were fueled by green grenades,
I needed speedbumps for my brain.
Mother said that If I lived to be a man
I would be all strewn about
like a crow-pecked scarecrow.
Eventually I discovered
a way to give words a meaning
outside of the hide-bound and buckram dictionary.
Naturally I had to surrender some grammatical logic
for a more fanciful argot.
It was only then that my pipsqueak prattle
had the effrontery to call itself ‘poetry.’
Now in n my grizzly elder state,
I still remain a rare bird,
ever bamboozled by age-worn chalk-talk,
or any jargon
that refuses to jump out of its own skin.
Like all things related to screwballs
and misfits
I was born looking for a word
inside a clock.
Back then, time ticked loudly,
clocks ran faster than chipmunks.
Young bones were fueled by green grenades
plucked from low-hanging life-lines.
I needed words to save the world,
I needed a clock-case to store them in,
I needed speedbumps for my brain.
Mother said that If I lived to be a man
I would be all strewn about
like a crow-pecked scarecrow.
Eventually I discovered
a way to make words bespoke,
to give them meaning
outside of the hide-bound
and buckram dictionary.
Naturally I had to invent my own time-machine,
and had to surrender to a fanciful argot.
For a long while, only blithe revenants
and their little helpers
could read my tenuous tidings.
It was only when my pipsqueak prattle
had the effrontery to call itself ‘poetry’
that some said sadly
that I may be ever so slightly explicable.
Alas mother was right, there is only the clock,
and it runs on mechanical words,
and so I remain a rare bird
bamboozled by age-worn chalk-talk,
a jargon that refuses
to jump out of its own skin.
Earring
Standing in line,
In my resolute behavior
Looking with contempt
At all the things ,that make my ears burn
Standing there waiting my turn
Conscious of the slow movement of the line
I hear the argot language, in the conversations that surround
My mind
Using patience and self-control
I begin to socialize until I realize
That the interacting with noisy gossip is not my thing
So I turn around and without a feeling
I disconnect from what only makes my
Ear-ring
CULLERCOATS *
Warm brown sandstone cottage walls
Doors and windows very old
Shelter face from sea-wind squalls:
Inside, tales of sea are told
Toy shops there with spinning windmills
Fisher - women selling show me
Big-clawed crabs and periwinkles:
Willicks and pin hinny? *
Twisting road clings on with ease
To the cliff edge way up high
Salty seaweed on the breeze :
Speaks of rocks and sand and sky
And though just a tiny cove
It has a brand-new shining lifeboat
For those who go to sea to rove:
It tells of men that cannot float
The fish, the salt, the boat, the rock
The storms and wrecks and tiny boats
I love to hear the fish-folk talk :
Their touching magic anecdotes
Notes *
Willicks : Geordie argot for periwinkles.
The pin was needed to pry out the tiny fish from its shell.
Cullercoats is a small fishing village on the east coast of England, near Newcastle.
Vodka breaths
Whirlpool for an altogether lacking
Semi-precious argot falling into ergo false
As thunder
Obscene bruising
Poster pallet body floods a smooth
Pre-determined crashing rhapsody enveloping
Scarcely baited fluent wounds
The barbed wire cheek with the organ fluid
Vodka-happy under vomit-endeavouring plagiarist pamphlets
Propaganda as juvenilia, writhing as cat claw drunken
Into harness, burgundy tort and lapsing as a pulse
The ribs enlarging into ever, and slow water bathes
Religiously nostalgic
The far-flung forever feverish into slow decline
Diving as a neck about rope and pleasure dome inverted
Under hammer-sickle skies a curdling milk infection
Purging the body of an absence and sleeping with the enemy
The smell of your cigarette
It rots me to the core
The vapoured vivid humes which engulf the very
Chamber of my swinging brick.
In fluent argot like a profound inchoate
Chthonic patronizing blood paroxysmally folds in curdles
You illuminate none but yourself with a pleasant scapegrace idiocy
Dishevelled and voluble in dark ages of medieval filth
Legerdemain to my vituperate wills and wanders
Anything in purge of the death of proclivity, namely yours
Crepuscular black skies, fugacious and oneiric...you dissolve them
Caviler
Caviler
Caviler
Abate your breaths
Beautiful innocence, purity plain and true is fleeting
Spent the honest face of likeability that wore the thin veneer of naivety
Forgotten the simple control of ratiocination, it has gone.
To be seen and heard, to be adored has become a primary focus, a purpose
“Listen to me, I’ve nothing to say”.
Jargon, so annoying, the argot so cloying
Phrases falling thick and abstruse
Self-respect adds pace to the celerity of idiocy
Suffocating sycophants arrive
Needing to be heard by one and by all
Surrounded by yes and no
Encircled with friends but friendless
At home but alone, minds clouded by the void
Told what to say, and love and do and who
Care less of others opinion, a talent blind and envious
Believing themselves eloquent sophisticats, nothing but empty headed morons
They could fill a room with words and not know their meaning, nor spell them
Not realising how vacuous and unnecessary they’ve become
Their inanity is an insult to the inane
Hate them, despise them. Want to be like them.
To the North, South, East, and West...
Geniuses are lost in the jaunty jewels of rakish cads,
The hazard morsel palaver allot odium on idioms...
Rankle virulent mishmash wheeze addle chagrin jives,
Loosing a volley of expletives ordure waft charmed oafs,
Self-iniquity gull maven heresy when blighted wizardry jinxes,
Ticklish cynic infidel swindle dupe cozen duress...
Squall patois and whammy sham schemas wriggle hoaxes,
Charlatans and hoodlums melange to dunce vows,
A shyster unquiet quivers with jester gestures now...
Semi-sacrilege vitiate and endemic jargon raze imps,
This collides as a white energy as dolt hooligan knaves beget...
Colloquial bilge putrefy, the rascals soon flatter us,
Bollix of potpourri lingo wanes to tutelary tongues,
Harlequin coercion argot musical novellas in history,
Pray our shifting shrapnel of karma, varnish boor minds,
Erstwhile, live grenades made of better lives are unvanquished as they are
thrown by unsung heroes into the North, South, East, and West,...amen...