My Love is a Word Thing

I was but a wee sprout — bright-eyed,

all thumby and dumbstruck —

when first I heard cacophony whispered

like a tongue-twist in the dark.

It licked my ear, that wicked witch of syllables,

ka-kaw-pho-nee,

like a crow’s complaint in a cracked cathedral.

Words—

they did me dirty and divine.

Slang slapped me on the back:

“Yo, chill. Bet. Bruh.”

While Chaucer chuckled in my ear

with his “queynte” and “swich” and “wight.”

I rode their rhyme, their rhythm, their wrath,

like a bard on a busted skateboard

kick-pushing through lexicons.

Love?

Love was “loave,” then “luf,” now it’s just

💀💅💯.

Gawd.

Words don’t die. They vibe.

They ghost ya. They roast ya.

They show up in your dreams like old crushes

with new fonts.

Oh, how I once did grovel at the feet of “melancholy,”

her vowels long and lush like cathedral halls,

where thoughts echo, echo, go.

I wrote

with a stubby pencil and a stomach ache,

dripping vowels on the page like warm spit,

consonants clinking like old coins

in a bard’s purse:

ding!—anapest!

clink!—trochee!

Iamb, thou sweet unruly steed!

One day I said “yeet” to a sonnet,

then said “elegiac” to a meme,

and the world went huh?

But I was in love —

mad, monkish love.

Scroll-scrolling through dictionaries

like one might swipe for flesh,

but hungering instead for the feel

of a syllable

tripping over its own feet

into a poem.

Thou knowest not what I know, O void,

I cried, quite over-caffeinated.

I know the power of puns.

How “mourning”

can dress in black

or bring breakfast in bed.

How “cleave” means to part

and to cling.

Snap, crackle, plot twist.

I recall—

(do I not?)

the first time I met “susurrus”

— it purred like a cat full of secrets —

and I held it close

like a purring scroll.

Or “blatherskite,” that frothy insult,

that drunk uncle of words,

slurring with style.

Sometimes I craft lines

all one beat each:

Word. Word. Word. Word.

Yes. No. Fly. Fall.

Then I switch to the seraphic

polyphonic, bibliophilic babble

of a linguaphile unhinged —

oxymoronic monologues of magniloquence,

sensuously sonorous,

sloshing through semiotics like wine.

O Muse of Mute Buttons and Mumbled Lines!

Give me back that first thrill

when “kerfuffle” flounced by in a frilled tutu,

and “obfuscate” flirted in shadows,

and “juxtapose” just posed.

I write, now, like a bard on espresso.

Each beat—a heartbeat.

Each verse—a curse.

Each stanza—a chance encounter

in the alley behind the mind.

Words know me.

They see my thirst.

They wink and ghost.

They come back drunk with meaning,

or sober and sharp as flint.

One word,

then one more.

Each kiss,

each hiss,

each eureka shriek

a sonic climax of cognition.

Verily, I say:

I have loved,

and do still love,

these syllabled spectres.

Language —

thou art my kink.