I would burst for you
effloresce on the spot
a kingfisher at heart
honest as the morning
pick any tree for me
I will be that sunbeam
phenomena in between
the pistachio branches

To be imbued with the conviction that empathic listening is a panacea,
by the surreptitious, murmurous harbinger and his mellifluous words,
provoked brooding that my comprehension of his susurrous eloquence was a mondegreen,
when this scintilla of sagacity left a fetching ingenue crestfallen.

By the surreptitious, murmurous harbinger and his mellifluous words!
I adopted a propinquity to this furtive, ephemeral epiphany,
but when this scintilla of sagacity left a fetching ingenue crestfallen,
I discerned this lagniappe beleaguered our dalliance.

I adopted a propinquity to this furtive, ephemeral epiphany.
When she became inured to petrichor I knew my method pyrrhic,
and when I discerned that this lagniappe beleaguered our dalliance,
I vowed to rectify the imbroglio for my quintessential cynosure.

When she became inured to petrichor I knew my method pyrrhic,
and I ruminated that her insouciance was only forbearance.
I vowed to rectify my quintessential cynosure of the imbroglio,
and fabricated a denouement to return her to halcyon incipient.

I ruminated that her insouciance was only forbearance,
until hearing her state our conflation made each a moiety of our own panoply.
She fabricated a denouement to return us to the incipience of halcyon
with ineffable felicity, and I remembered with ebullience my inamorata's words.

Hearing her state our conflation made each a moiety of our own panoply
provoked brooding that my comprehension of her susurrous eloquence was a mondegreen.
With ineffable felicity I found ebullience in my inamorata's words
and was imbued with the conviction that empathic listening is a panacea.

A Woman of Many Words

I am a Woman of Many Words
I am drawn to all those places
        That words congregate:
                 Libraries and bookstores
                       Road signs and billboards
                             Ticket stubs and subtitles
                                    Nametags and license plates
Each one a journey driving inside me
I am a Woman of Many Words
I love the way the shapes feel in my mouth
The skittle taste of syllables
I am drawn to especially long words
With their phonetic entities stretching out like tentacles to reach new corners of pronunciation
Words like
              Bibliophile and flippant-irreverence
                      Evanescent and Insouciance
      Mellifluous and Effervescent
                                       Mondegreen and Labyrinthine
Words like
Onomatopoeia and Tintinnabulation
I appreciate their weight on my tongue
The way my hands appreciate the thickness that is a fat book
I am a Woman of Many Words
I am attracted to their multitude
The space their figures take up on a page
The calligraphic punches
Typed up by keys
The carefully constructed
Brush strokes
Spouting
What is sure to be, nonsense
But I do enjoy the sound of nonsense in the morning
I am a Woman of Many Words
I cling to the lettered skyscrapers wherever I can find them
Because the familiar scent of scribbles across parchment is comfort food for me
I find them
On the backs of cereal boxes
And in Popsicle riddles
In fortune cookies
And alphabet soup
From magnets on my fridge
To junk food logos
And I hold on to them for dear life
For fear that silence should find me
And leave me empty
For fear it will take away the music of maracas
Made by words
Dancing the salsa inside me

I am a Woman of Many Words
because Words
Answer my Questions,
Soothe my fears,
and Humor my Whims
They are not always Right
But they are always Constant
They are not always Honest, in fact,
Mostly
They Lie
But ever so often
They tell such a Beautiful Lie
That you wish it were true
They sing from the rocks
offering Escape from
Terrifying,
Suffocating,
Mind numbing Silence
that echoes off my skeleton
I am afraid that silence will hollow out my insides
and leave me abandoned
with nothing between my Bow and Stern
my Forecastle all torn up
I am afraid of the skeleton inside me
So I am a Woman of Many of Words
For fear of silence
And contempt for truth
Because my words are sirens
And my shipwreck is home here

Hear her soft lilt before espying her
from the promenade?

Listen carefully for mondegreen.
This morning she will come out
of the water, risen from froth,
made of the same elements
as Adam's Eve,
a pastiche dressed in summer's flurry,
transpicuous & clung-to,
amaryllises strung about
hair & thoughts,
the sinfully twisted scent
of Bergamot Orange
filling the nostrils as they flare.

Shall she succeed in coaxing you back
to a tree that once held such promise?

You know your alphabet, yes you do, all twenty six letters you say by rote.
Few know there once was Twenty- seven, one more of which you should take note.
It is the humble Ampersand; the character you see today
Used mostly as a linkage between two corporate proper names.
It does mean “and” it always did; its shape from Latin is derived.
Its name is a type of Mondegreen, by pronouncement it is described.
Back in Elizabethan time when schoolboys said their alphabet
They did not end with “X.Y.Z” but with “and per se &”
The Roman “Et” was anglicized and its usage codified.

Eyes out the silk-curtained window.
Slender fingers around the stem of a crystal wine glass.
The starry night glistened as it sang to her –

Die, mondaine.
Die, with your diamonds choked around your neck.
Your husband is out with a lowly demimonde.
She’s higher than you tonight,
Or every night, smoking her diamorphine.
What is the worth of your life?
One pearl necklace, paired with an earring
One diamond ring, paired with an anklet
The bottle is your outlet.
You’re just as ruined as that mundane
Other woman. Not so diametrical now,
Are you?

Die, Little Lady Mondaine,
Thirty-eight and with such an ugly fate –
How quickly her beauty waned.
How many tears would it be until
He prayed for her love again?
Her heels brushed the Persian rug
Mascara ran down her porcelain face.
What an ugly fate.

And die, mondaine, they chanted
On a plain and mundane night.
Your furs and heels won’t save you.
Your children, they betray you.

Die, pretty mondaine.
She listened to the mondegreen in her ears,
Sang to her by the moon. The stars.
A prayer.

Closing her eyes, her blood spilled into the wine glass.
The galaxy drank it and wept.
What a diamond, she was,
Lady Ayn.