"brooked" poems
A woman I once worked with
Was ordinarily quite intelligent
But when it came to pronunciation
She could become belligerent.
Her way was the right way
And she brooked no question.
Braving her ire, I decided there
Was one I had to mention.
She said the word comf-tubble
And I said that was incorrect.
She got so very irate with me
That I feared for my own neck.
She called it socially acceptable,
Her ghastly mispronunciation.
I said it was a sign of the times
The slippery slope of our nation.
If people were to go on and cease
An honored way of speaking
Then, we are all of us adrift
In a doomed skiff that is leaking.
She said some more to me
But I quit paying much attention.
There were too many “I means”
And “you knows” to mention.
There were ‘haftas’ and ‘ominas’
And the sad utterance, ‘wannabees”.
This poor soul would not pass
The first hour of a spelling bee.
I wondered if this poor soul
Had seen on a computer screen.
The words just as she was saying
On some website she had seen?
I accept that nobody in the USA
Or even in Merry Old Blighty
Says words like Wednesday
Comfortable or February rightly.
It’s like there is an international
Formal and binding declaration
That nobody need say these words
Correctly in English speaking nations.
We can lapse into hickbonics,
We jess *** tah stumble along
And say set instead of sit, and
Others we so often say wrong.
We kin say double pneumonia
And quay’s eye and nukeyoulurr,
Irregardless and even *** cans,
And nobuddy questions wut fur.
We c’n say thangs like reel utter,
SimmYooLurr, BennaFishErAiry.
Innerest, furrmillyurr, Mason Airy,
Flustration and shudder LieBerry.
But as sure as there is air to breathe
And that every day will follow night
Most people pronouncing words
A certain way doesn’t make it right.
Sep 22, 2015
Sep 22, 2015 at 11:53 PM UTC
There was, every spring, a new batch of pups,
Yipping, nipping, clumsy ***** of ***** fur,
Looking for all the world like speckled tennis *****
Before they’d learned any hard lessons
At the hands of a racquet.
They chased their tails and each other,
Not to mention various other denizens of the barnyard:
Frantic chicks, cranky piglets,
The occasional bemused draft horse,
And sometimes they chased us as well,
Yelping childishly, rolling with us on the ground,
Nipping bare fingers and toes,
Afterwards lying on the ground asleep,
Looking , save for the rhythmic twitching of their paws,
Positively angelic.
Come late August,
The time would come to set them on the *****
We’d long since stopped thinking about it,
Much less questioning it
(I had, one year, asked my father if the puppies had to go
One time too many until,
With a look that brooked no further conversation,
He said flatly It’s what they’re born to.)
So we went on with the business
Of the soft, slow late summer
Until one evening just after sunset
We would hear the baying of the hounds
Out toward the back fields,
Mechanical and workmanlike at first,
But soon strained and syncopated with excitement,
And at some point there would be
A cacophony of cries and snarls
Until such time there was only silence.
The next morning we would visit the dogs,
And we’d pet them and rough-house a bit,
And there might be an oddly rouged spot
On their coats here and there,
Or one of them might sneeze out a tuft of fur
That didn’t rightly belong to them,
And every year our Uncle Bryce would slyly opine
*You boys may want to be a bit more careful
Around their mouths now, hear*?
Apr 13, 2017
Apr 13, 2017 at 10:18 AM UTC
as our letters age
my twenty six best friends gather round a winter fire,
a Valentine’s Day retreat from the bones internal chilly yellowing,
we’ve been together from the Day One beginning, a life of
commencing conception, deception, immaculate and messy mixing
practicing fumbling, making and breaking the conventional,
we arrange and rearrange our unique ordering, overlapping
with your version, cousin, so we communicate, but uniquely ours,
individualist letters, witnesses, markers, word~children, born, lost
soon seventy will come, and a party, a literary review to be held,
mourning the many, works uncompleted, toasting the few that satisfied,
acknowledging the collaboration of all the twenty six with
special guests,
an aging five senses
that were the kindling that sparked them into action
oh my dear ones, my best friends, your knew me too well,
my best, worst,
my progeny, blood of my blood, voice of my guts,
consoling friends, who
brooked my self-deceptions, yet denounced them when
over-the-topping,
comforters of our mutual ashes buried in one casket,
our final poem, clutched, at last...
my alphabet of life...
Sat. Feb 22, 2020
10:26am
Feb 22, 2020
Feb 22, 2020 at 10:26 AM UTC
I don’t stand out because my clothes are on point
I am not memorable because my intellect is one of a kind
My speech and my gait wouldn’t be considered the best
And there’s nothing the world I can do better than the rest
My song's just simple enough to be overlooked
My presence often dismissed, rarely brooked
Ordinary are my thoughts, nothing ever so divine
My remembrance but a modest dot in the elaborate design
I am not so lousy either as to draw a lot of attention
Just adequate enough to probably win consolation
While my story may be generic, familiar and trife
I am appropriately average to be living my finest life
Mar 27, 2020
Mar 27, 2020 at 7:32 PM UTC
Some say that life is a mystery
That we have to pay our dues,
It’s written in every history
Marked out by a series of clues.
So it was when I saw her sally forth
With that lost refrain of us,
Older now, but a constant muse
As we caught the self-same bus.
I hadn’t seen her in twenty years,
Her temples were going grey,
She’d gained a little in weight, I thought,
Since she’d stormed on out that day.
She didn’t see me at first, I know.
Or she might have raised a fuss,
But I sat beside her, anyway
On the rearmost seat of the bus.
She huddled up in the corner when
She saw just who it was,
I couldn’t get her to speak at first
And I felt a sense of loss.
‘Fancy seeing you now, out here,’
I began, ‘it’s been a while.’
Could I detect the hint of a tear?
There was no sign of a smile.
‘It’s been forever,’ she said at last,
‘And I’ll thank you now to go,
I have no need of ghosts from the past
In the life I’ve come to know.’
I heard my voice, it broke in my throat
As I tried to suppress a sigh,
‘I have no wish to alarm you now,
But I thought to ask you, Why?’
‘Why did you leave that sunny day
In that terrible month of June,
You said you were going to make me pay
When I came back into the room.’
‘You know full well that I had to leave
When that woman knocked at the door,
That painted Jade, that Jezebel,
That blonde, unspeakable *****
My jaw dropped open in bleak surprise,
I struggled with grim intent,
I couldn’t think for the life of me,
Or remember who she meant.
‘There was no woman, as I recall
Though you always thought there was,
Your paranoia was there on call…
Did you mean my region’s boss?’
The mist was beginning to clear away
From that mystery, lost in time,
‘My god, she called to discuss our costs,
Did you think that she was mine?’
She stared at me and her face went pale
As the truth came home to bite,
‘I sat and waited for months, when you
Didn’t come home that night!’
A tear now flowed down her pale white cheek
And she turned her face from me,
She stared on out of the window at
Some vagrant, passing tree.
‘I always loved you alone,’ I said,
But she’d never brooked delays,
We both got off at the same bus stop,
And went our separate ways.
David Lewis Paget
Dec 7, 2014
Dec 7, 2014 at 2:05 AM UTC
if i closed
you—
if the air fell
backwards, darkly—
if yours
brooked with golden
sunrise
softened (i love
when you
dance.
Apr 2, 2018
Apr 2, 2018 at 10:10 PM UTC