Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia
An irrational fear of large or long words
Well, you might say that’s for the birds
And it’s your right to have your say
A hippopotamus for most of us
Is an Artiodactyla, an even toed ungulate
While monstrum in Latin means: unnatural things
A monstrosity, a warning from the gods
While as showoffs, sesquipedalians use long words
So don’t scare them with your Titan Arum
But say to those with Ithyphallophobia
Or to the megalophallian “Nostrvia!”
And don’t be calloused towards
What happens afterwards
Or averse to what happens after “words”
In the post coital spooning
Don’t let your creative inhibition
Be the condition of wrestling with tabula rasa
And don’t let coitus interruptus
Or a caudal Janus face give you writer’s block
(I’m trying to be a gentleman
by calling it a phallus and not a rooster)
So, you won’t find here this fear of
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
You can tell him no
but the training wheels on his head
spin on,
he thinks you don’t mean it,
that you don’t mean a thing
even when that ‘thing’ is a
tense bubble of spitting camels.
He just keeps on talking
as if you had never said so
or he had not glimpsed bared
broad yellow teeth.
He is an old branch of my tree
his teeth clatter
as his stiff leaves rattle you
into a nervous tick and frozen smile.
Yet a part of him is child-like
not young but green stemmed
and river deep in its sap.
When I ply him with wine
thinking I might wilt his scratchy chatter
he can flick and startle jangled nerves
with a pliant and quick stepping wisdom
and a spry sly humor,
a wit sprung from a well deeper than mine,
then I wish I were also that fresh a watering,
and not a herder of fractious
even-toed ungulates.
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