Your eyes glisten
and a tear forms.
Your Braille tongue
mouths a silent vocabulary.
The ‘O’ of your mouth
spells out the anguish within,
and with mute hands
you give voice to
an ear-piercing scream.
life can be funny or sad
depending on how it goes
I have had girlfriends say they would never love again
they invited me to their big wedding day
I feel that never is a very long time
why put the word never onto anything
I said for many years not to say never
never is not in my vocabulary.
I dont think I have anywhere left to go, nothing "new" for you to read
I wanna write something, anything that's devoid
of me
Im at this age where my feelings seldom change and everything I have to say is starting to sound the same
Why cant I just, take myself out of the equation
I can't severe the connection from me to this pen, this keyboard ,these scraps of paper floating
When you grab them and line them all up theres an outline of my heart
I wanna take you somewhere else now, I just dont know where to start
When I was young my father taught me dead languages , gave me kitchen spelling bees
and when I got bad grades I had to copy the dictionary
from a to z, word for word
But I sit here in front of this page empty
because what do I have to show for it?
Absolutely nothing
I need to learn some new words I wish my mind could speak using less adjectives and more verbs
maybe my problem is that I'm sitting still dreaming, instead of actually doing something
Like taking myself out of the equation
My heart clogs
up my throat
when I
try speaking about
how it feels.
Too large to fit
through
the thin trachea
of my limited vocabulary.
Added 'apricity' to my vocabulary.
The kiss of sunshine on winter days.
Learn something new every day.
Wordku: 5-7-5 words
AP: Honorable Mention 2026
Vocal rumblings as you sleep and dream,
Only a fool would believe you’re dreaming of me~
Could it be your sweet reverie is a unconscious plea
Aimed at my heart like an arrow shot?
Be mine again I whisper to you,
Under the chaos of us I pledge to be true,
Love me again I plead on this night of insight
As I remember the vows we spoke long ago,
Remember we said unto death ~
Your life insurance is up-to-date,
yes, I checked to make sure!
In California today, 2025, city managers, attorneys, engineering
Work in an infrastructure of control without water fountains.
Micromanaged district supervision of States of legislature
Troughing below the poverty lines as entrance and exit serve the wills inheriting the labor of "housing" "something" without competing.
Prediction of 24 hours, 7 days, is enough hearing of you
Needn't be hear nor better with time in a second arrived
Lots full of practice and routine appearance
Essayists and poets marching
Into town halls to legislate
Creating labora frame
Georgia 5th had no time to talk
I could use common vocabulary,
but to be honest I never liked it;
The dictionary or the library,
a scavenger hunt I’ll gladly commit;
Buried within a myriad of books,
or a placement on some forgotten list;
Oh, the poetry that a word unhooks!
Without that piece it’s so easily missed;
Recalibrating an old phrase with flare,
rearranged letters liven up the line;
Describing the vision that pen laid bare,
synonyms and a timeless theme combine;
I could say it the way the others do
but it would come off as only half-true.
When I can’t write, I feel a knot in my chest. A building pressure tight like a bullet proof vest and an itching in my hands that just will not rest.
It’s not a lack of paper and pen, I’ll scratch poems onto the walls. Type them on my phone as I walk through the halls, write in blue ink on school bathroom stalls. The problem is a lack of something that calls
to me, not physical things but vocabulary. Cause I can always write, but without soul It just doesn’t sound right.
Words fly away like birds and leap away like bunnies, I’m almost inspired by the way they evade me.
When I can’t write it’s not a thesaurus I turn to. Nor is it a dictionary, because it’s not words that are missing but meaning. A blank sheet of paper like snow, white and gleaming, so much potential I just want to pour myself onto it, bleeding
But the blood does not come. The paper stays white and pristine and unmarked as I claw around in the dark twisting and turning my fingers and pen through the bloody guts of a world of words that I just cannot see within.
The heavy mass in my stomach grows and grows
But the words still won’t flow,
when I can’t write.
Flowers are the divine vocabulary
That
God uses to compose heaven's literature
Of
Eternal beauty.
© Demetrios Trifiatis
08 September 2023
I love vocabulary games, and these odd words came up in English words games, recently: Bute ( I know "Butte" but not BUTE) & "abseil," "landau," and even "Bourne" (identity?).
A poem about a simpler word, FLIERS.
When we say FLY,
Buzzing by and by
Which is it?
Plane or insect?
But when we use "Fliers"
The letters reveal secrets:
"liFe," "selF," "lies" & "Flies" again
LIFERS is best of all
In this game; Hope for us all
My vocabulary is scooting up like a weed
in a as-fault jungle
I mean, it's so incredulous how many
unhackneyed words I've cognized
lately... So I'm going to give me a standing ovulation
and throw it up for me, mice elf, and aye ~
my pronounces, jic* you haven't guessed yet ~
Can I take my leaf now and do the splitsvilles?
____________________________________________
* 'jic' = just in case
V anishes from my memory when writing
O asis metaphors to fill some lost forlorn soul
C achinnating reclusive in their space
A ccomplishable feat: who knows?
B amboozlement as if a magical potion served
L iterature that becomes a leader
A bundant, adorable, and accurate vocabulary
R esides within a Merriam-Webster dictionary
Y o!!
Let me read you like a book,
Allow me to understand the hardest phrases in your vocabulary,
Taking all the time to smile, laugh and cry like you did,
And when am done,allow me to be a part of the next chapter.
I feel like an antiquity
some relic from the past
crumbling at the edges
eroded over time
aging has arrived
There are fissures in my proud steel plated armor
once invincible
reality is bringing with it a heavy blow
it creeps upon you
like a stealth thief in the night
now you berate yourself
for being caught unaware
new words slip into your vocabulary
things like “possible stroke”
a litany of tests are conducted
let’s begin with a blood test
maybe a urine sample
we can schedule an MRI
is this a heart attack
there is a CAT or CT scan as it is known
what about the C word, cancer
let’s do an ultrasound
ff that doesn’t find it there is always
an endoscopy or colonoscopy complete with biopsy
the realization that life’s destiny is prevailing
is the end nigh
the relic you have become
looking at you in the mirror of life
Andreas Simic©
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