In too many drawers, cigar boxes, old purses
I’d left them unattended, gift and grief borne alike
We don’t often aspire to abandon,
but who can argue the evidence
Too many words
Let’s not be quick to call them clutter
just extra, overtaking the house
Boxed for storage is the delay of tossed.
Keep, and I curse the kids with mom’s last words
What is left, the almost, wasn’t, isn’t,
the lofty, the lengthy,
what was this from and where was I going?
Pick, choose, and declare the ever undone
but of some worth surely, to someone
If priced lightly and attractively arranged
poetry for sale
Convenient words—a dime
Words with dual meaning, the sly, the slippery
verbs adept as adverb ejectors –a quarter
Rhymes priced by familiarity and number,
lonely phrases almost all under a dollar
Lost ideas were harder—maybe $2, up to $10?
All the I’s went in a bin by the checkout, free
everyone has I’s
I separated the ex words, posted a warning
Even though they are useful,
explicit, expunge, experiment, exist;
there are hidden costs
It read
“Few truly separate, stand free of their ex.
If you take an ex, you will have dependents”
(They were all gone, people don’t learn…admittedly
the print was rather small)
I waffled on the fussy words
SAT vocabulary recognizable if irritating,
words with aspirations, but grounded in applicability
SATs people know but don’t choose out of habit
Give them a table. they’ll go
Now, how to market the archaic, unused,
words spewed into a room as a test to impress
with shaming the intended by-product
Owners inimical, obstreperous, their bearing mendacious,
bullies in accent, posture and air
I’d seen him the once — William F Buckley, yes,
elitist and archaic past recognition, ha!
now reduced to “buckleys” in Sharpie
on cardboard
.