Words – PoetryPix

“The very names of things belov’d are dear
And sounds will gather beauty from their sense”
Roger Seymour Bridges

there’s a hum that hastens to be heard
sometimes tinny now but still there
always there- the buzz jangle of words
from the first decode of the childish alphabet
the lexicon speeding across pages, fluid
trails with portrayals in their tales
that honeyed world of playful phonetics
preening themselves on the palate
titbits to titillate the tongue
or reach round vowels, spitting out the coarse
and bitty consonants, spooning up
a syllabub of sibilants

many a hue and cry has hullabalood my ears since
utterances from a once secret stash
when the mouth suddenly gapes opens
openly defies the keen-eyed censor, gate-crashes
gatekeepers, surprises the humdrum speaker
or sends coded notes to doleful dreamers
and within a carefully cryptic confabulation
lets slip the accidentals, words put out of place
in place of words put there as decoy
– from such phonetical amalgams of affliction
the silenced rebel with tongues of fire
until the crossword therapy is done

now am parodist with an heir presumptive air
sitting pretty at the keys, metronoming metres
for pedestrian ditties and sounding solo recitations
in rooms with no ears, as mantras, prayers,
pin-cushioning paeans into effigies of poets past
and all the while words wallow in a verbal vortex
like whales humpbacking the five oceans
definitions drift and bob with capricious tides
we must fathom-gather what we can
in a resounding sense of beauty