Ramshackle

Ramshackle ….

I’ve made the place neat and tidy just ramshackle enough

so it looks lived in

*pic courtesy of pinterest

Petrichor

She loves the word ‘petrichor’

She fondles it like a pet dragon.

She repeats it during meals

and chuckles.

The next morning.

What’s that word again.

I tell her.

Her eyes gleam .

That pet dragon look.

I never knew one could love

a word so much.

*are there particular words you love, just for their sound, their strangeness?

• pic by deviant art o pinterest

Up in Smoke

You don’t see many houses with chimneys anymore.

They seem to have gone up in smoke,

like ashtrays in cars and restaurants,

and ‘smoko’ at work places.

I used to love ‘smoko’ even though I didn’t smoke.

And what about that wine everyone used to drink back in the sixties,

and no one asks for anymore. ‘claret’ at least in Oz?

When’s the last time you heard anyone drop into a Liquorland or BWS

and ask, got any claret on special, sport?

Come to think of it when’s the last time anyone called someone, ‘Sport

The other day an old mate asked me, would I like to drop by for ‘tea’.

‘Tea’? What the ^%^% is that? It’s a word like claret you don’t hear much anymore except in reference to the drink, the alternative to coffee.

I slip into it now and then — old habits die hard. You’ve got to watch yourself. .

can you think of other words or customs that have died out?

When Topsy Met Turvy

Whenever you see the word ‘nooks’ you just know

that ‘ crannies’ is going to pop up somewhere:

they go together,

as the song says, like the horse & carriage,

welded together like conjoined twins;

once, they lived separate lives; like ‘topsy’ & ‘turvy’;

a rambunctious couple;

how they got together is anyone’s guess:

was it during a blind-date, or a casual hook-up in

some covert etymological corner

and their chemistry clicked?  

Whenever I lose

a coin or capsule, I’ m never sure whereto look first:

a nook or a cranny?

Once I lived in a unit where there were no nooks

and another where there were no crannies;

I couldn’t wait to get out of either place.

• pic Pinterest by Julie Robin-Wagner

The Worst Thing

“What’s the worst thing?” I was asked in my zoom workshop.

“The worst thing? What a writer can do? Let’s see.” I said. “The worst thing is being staid”.

I had to spell the word to make sure they got the right meaning.

“You know what ‘staid’ is?” I asked.

:Yes,” Tamara answered. “Unadventurous. Dull.”

“Correct. And you know where the word ‘staid’ comes from?”

There was silence.

“It’s the adjectival use for the past tense of ‘stay’ which is ‘stayed’ so the worst sin of a writer is being rigid, unadventurous, unchanging, unwilling to take risks, staying the same.”

I let that sink in.

“Living things evolve,” I said. “Let your writing evolve. Take risks. Don’t worry if some don’t take off. Others will hit their mark. But you don’t know if you don’t try.”

We took a short break … and we all came back a little different.

• do you agree? what do think the worst sin a writer can commit?

The Man Who Lost his Face

I was reading about Dallas Wiens who, while working inside

an hydraulic arm,  brushed against powerlines while painting

a church roof: how God  sizzled through him  but burnt

his face away; the word ‘debridement’ came up, the practice

of removing dead tissue, fat, muscle so a transplant could take place;

and I thought, hey! isn’t that’s what it’s like when you’re burnt

by fast and furious love? the high voltage thrill and fury that knocks

the heart sideways and scars it till the scorched pieces can be debrided,

a lovely and awesome word that suggests a young bride being ripped

from your side: ‘debrided’ , oh wow!

Loose

My mother always warned me about loose women

to avoid them at all costs.

But what about loose lemons?

That’s a whole new ball game.

And I need one for my fish tonight.

Do I risk it?

And what about loose thoughts?

Isn’t that where creativity comes from,

thoughts that amble along like a jazz tune that’s lost its way?

I posted a poem last night about an invisible dog

that turned out to be a bit of a lemon.

Talking of which….

I’ll take one loose lemon, I say to the check-out girl,

and o, excuse the loose change.

My First Daft

I always call it ‘my first daft’ because I let the ideas roll recklessly out of my mind onto the page. No censoring, no editing. That comes later. That comes at the draft stage. For the moment what you have before you, were you to read it, is ‘daffy’, it makes little or no sense. It is amorphous writing. This little piece began amorphously, no punctuation, grammar awry, phrases all jumbled like a Rubik’s Cube before it is solved. If you’re in a hurry, if the ideas are rushing past, then daft writing is the way to go.