Word Garden Word List--Immortal Poems

 

Hello my little bargain hunters! Our List this week is taken from a rather interesting source--Immortal Poems of the English Language, Oscar Wiliams editor. It's copyright 1952 originally, but my paperback edition is from the 24th printing, in 1970. I chose words from poems by Yeats, Auden, Frost, Eliot, and numerous others.

Even our unhoused friend can afford Immortal Poems.

I bought it at a used book store for 50 cents, an absolute age ago. (It's original brand-new price was a whopping 95 cents!) This set me to thinking. Your average current potboiler will set you back 25 dollars or so, while Immortal Poems of the English Language was got for half a dollar. (Full disclosure: I just checked it on Thriftbooks.com and they want $8.39 for it in "acceptable" condition. Mine is falling apart after decades of constant use but I got my fifty pennies worth!)  This says something about the value placed on poetry in our modern world, as opposed to mere entertainment, I think. I am far too humble and witless to say exactly what, however. I am shy. Demure. I can hear all of you snickering, so straighten up and fly right, you lot!

Anyway, rabble, what we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then simply link up, visit others, and then settle down with Immortal Poems and a nice beverage of your choice. Coffee, double cream for me, please. This prompt remains active through Saturday. 

And Now, your List!

animals

craves

deep

dripping

eaten

epitaph

fabric

fish

genuine

guts

heaps

hello

hollow

hour

mirror

names

she-wolf

shrine

skies

sphere

I feel confident that I can predict one of the words that Sherry will use!

Summer

 

Here's a secret:

summer isn't real. 

It's a replica cooked up in an industrial oven somewhere.

Want to know 

how I know

how I know 

want to know?

hmm hmm hmm?

Sugar, I could enlighten you about a few things,

lay out the deets like an Alexa  but with way better hair.

You see, the real summer, 

the one we grew up in like 

wogs in a puddle with our

bikes and Kool-Aid and

sense of endless warm nose-in-the-green-grass days ahead,

she's gone, my dude. 

They have her secured at Gitmo or Bethesda or somewhere,

trying to find out HOW, like HOW, summer? Give it up already!

She's a clam, she tells them to fuck right off, so there she stays.

This new summer, the one we're in now

like koi fish swimming around saying looky,

our orbit is decaying, mayday mayday!

water temp rising, abandon ship!

is

not

real.

This cheap knock-off, this ersatz season, is as fake as an Eligible Bachelor

with a certificate of authenticity laminated and embossed

with a realistic official seal sticking out of his man purse. I mean

gimme a break.

You don't know me and shit, I get that.

I could just be somebody off their meds

or trolling you because because because...

because that's the wonderful thing she does!

So here is 

one

true

sentence,

and it is the truest sentence that I know:

I long for Fall, because Fall knows me, keeps the windows

yellow-lit and has my long sweater ready, laundered

and scented, laid out next to my cute sox and funky newsboy cap;

Fall wants me, lets me know that I am a work of art and a woman

in the right flesh at the right time to carry the right soul  and a mug

of hot mocha straight into an October morning and live there.

Now imma cry and bake in the phony replacement sun

and maybe if you're any kind of friend you'll say shh shh

baby and tell me softly

in my ear

about leaves

and frost

and hope

and all that happy hopscotch,

ok?

Hang a while with me 

and be my balm in Gilead, 

 my Saint Anthony to the lost.

___________

For Word Garden Word List--Whisper Down the Lane. 

I kind of lifted my man Ernest's words for that one part. No wait, it's an homage!

Music: Fontella Bass Rescue Me