The 26 Foot Balderdash

I'm gonna get serious about writing serious poetry...soon.

 I am a poet, a smith, a veritable husbandman of words.
Like a tree, words have roots, they grow, and split into branches
The sun causes different shades. The fruit varies in size and weight.
I love them. I chew them up and spit out the seeds.

Word seeds mix with the new soil, with other environments
Over time the apple word develops a wide array of colourful hues.
The taste of the word is sweeter, juicier, or perhaps more tart.
There is a golden, delicious, gala of meanings.

The problem comes when comparing apples or rhyming oranges.
This is where the analogy runs into a tree and crashes.
Now I get weird, cheesy, and puny; which is what I do best.
I stared at a prompt list of words and went crazy.

Susquehanna: Isn't that the female version of Sasquatch?
Talisman: The banana counter. He tallies them before daylight.
Moiety: The quality of being a stooge. (see also curley or hi-larity)
Woebegone: An ACME spray product to get rid of troubles.

Bucolic: A. a baby scared into an upset tummy. B. a kind of plague.
Gambol: To play away your money and have to skip a meal.
Offing: The penultimate step in a mob negotiation.
Fugacious: A good fellow willing to forgive. (ie Fuggedabuddit)

Bungalow: A dead buffalo used to plug a hole in something.
Untoward: Moving away from. (Lit. me in a unitard)
Pancea: Thinly sliced smoked Italian bacon.
Balderdash: A. Breaking an orb. B. A less hirsute short foot race.

I am a poet, a smith, a veritable husbandman of words.
I love them. I chew them up and spit out the seeds.

Streamlined

Words 
  like 
    water 
      flowed 
        gently
          'til 
             streamlined, 
                then they could even cut stone.

Kablooie!

On-----o-----mat-----o-----p(o)e-----(i)a

On----o----mat----o----p(o)e----(i)a

On---o---mat---o---p(o)e---(i)a

On--o--mat--o--p(o)e--(i)a

On-o-mat-o-p(o)e-(i)a

Onomatop(o)e(i)a.Onomatop(o)e(i)a!

What a long mantra making word.

It means sharp and punchy words, but is neither.

It means words that sound like sounds.

It sounds like nothing I've heard.

If I heard a thing rasping like that in the dark,

You would hear the slap of my feet on the floor as I fly.

There is a repeating rhythm to it's staccato syllables

Like a conga line melody.

OnomatopoeiA!(shake your hip to the right)

OnomatopoeiA!(shake your hip to the left) 

There is a cruel irony to it for those who can't say words.

Almost as cruel as using the word dyslexia for those

who find reading and speaking complex words complicated.

For a word about the full richness of sound written down,

Why are silent letters softly squished between the others?

Oh, but this is all tongue in cheek, whatever sound that makes.

As a child of the era of comics and the funny pages,

I have been spoon fed and loved these chaotic, crazy words.

BAM! POW! ZIP! ZAP! KABLOOIE!

BIFF! BLAM! KLANG! KA-KA-KABOOM!

The first draft.

   Here it is. The first post of my first blog. Well, to be fair, my wife Esther and I did have a blog: "the Spurrill-Jones clan: keeping up with ourselves." It was a play on the 'keeping up with the Joneses' cliche. We apparently couldn't seeing as it is gathering dust in the archives of cyberspace. She now has two blogs of her own Esther Jones: I Just Live Here and The Spelling and Grammar Templar. It's flitted through my mind a time or two, "I should have my own blog." Then she told me she was going to start a writing challenge--31 poems in 31 days for October: OctPoWriMo. The problem is, I needed a blog to join the blog hop, so I started one. I will be posting a daily poem, as well as some other random thoughts and stories that come.

   I have always loved reading, writing, and telling stories. I love words and their shades of meaning. For example, this post title. 'The first draft'. In essays a draft is a practice writing that you keep tweaking until 'the final draft' which could be a metaphor for death. In construction you draft up plans using a professional draftsman. If you don't follow the plan to letter you'll find a cold draft finding you. In war a draft is an involuntary conscription from a list of names, like I've been roped into this contest. Yet in sports to be the first draft pick is a sought after prize. If you get it, you go for a draft beer delivered by a big draft horse. In banking a draft is a sort of cheque drawn against your wealth. I hope I don't bankrupt my creativity. Some  proper people think you're daft if you don't spell draft as draught as one aught(aft?) to. Finally, draft is the amount of wind in a ship's sails. So I'll cast off and see where this ship of fool gets me.