Poetic Reflections: bon-mottery

a column by Lori R. Lopez


I have managed to avoid most addictions along my journey, yet I must confess here and now that I am hopelessly — helplessly — haplessly (take your pick) passionate about words. There, I’ve said it. Spilled my guts all over this page. I feel less burdened by the dark dire secret I have carried for too long.

’Tis no laughing matter, but a rare and serious cravence that affects the odd bibliophilic scrivener once in a purple moon.

The disorder has brought me nothing but pain and misery, tormented by criticism for using words extravagantly. Not redundantly, of course; I am obsessively and compulsively opposed to that. For abusing adjectives abundantly. For pumping my sentences with the plumiage of excess verbiage. I will even resort to homemade concoctions!

I must admit there is no limit to the amount of words I revel, nay, wallow in. And I shall never amend my ways, never attend a Word Watchers meeting, for I am deliriously hooked and proud of it.

Oh, the disgrace and inglorious shame.

Being incapable of resisting the urge, I composed a poem regarding this unfortunate disease and, yes, it contains . . . words. I ask that you read it with compassion and try not to judge or pity me.

BON-MOTTERY

I have a terrible affliction

I like bon-mottery alottery

And stir diction in my fiction

Molding adjectives like pottery

 

I love words, quite pure and simple

Also fancy and profound

Young and old, dimpled or apimple

Skinny-mini, plump and round

 

Positive or negative

Giddy, rhyming, elaborately verbose

Hyperactive, lazily laxative

Tentative, brash, superfluose

 

Past-tense or present

Futuristic, archaic, slanged

Random, stilted, or incessant

Sugar-coated or harangued

 

Vernacular and jargon

Queries and hypotheses

Ten-dollar or a bargain

I flaunt and flout them all with ease

 

It really doesn’t matter

As long as they communicate

Whether silly or syllabiliac

But wait, there is one type I hate

 

As an animal-lover can shudder

At the scurry of a roach

And humanity care for each other

Yet find some kinds to reproach

 

I detest the foulest haughties

Spoke by every tongue

The nasties and the naughties

I dislike them every one

 

Slander, insults, mockery

Phrases cruelly flung

Abusive contusive wockery

Jibber-jabber blindly slung

 

Crude words, wrathful rude words

Vehement, sly, or minced

Grifted, grafted, crabbily crafted

Keenly carved and pinced

 

Terms thrust like swords and daggers

Tossed careless to the wind

The rot-mottish curse of braggers

That stings the thickest-skinned

 

Such panderings and slanderings

Which increasingly abound

Can harm the ears of little dears

Sensitive to the sound

 

Think twice before you speak

What isn’t very nice

Heed well the pain you wreak

And follow my advice

 

Not to swear a blue streak angrily

When at your wit’s deep ends

Choose your words as carefully

As you should pick your friends

 

On my list of baneful motteries

There’s another I abhor

The flagrance of redundancies

Please don’t use them anymore.

~ Published ~
December 11, 2009

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