NaPoWriMo 2022 – April 2
Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem based on a word featured in a tweet from Haggard Hawks, an account devoted to obscure and interesting English words. Will you choose a word like “aprosexia,” which means “an inability to concentrate”? Or maybe something like “greenout,” which is “the relief a person who has worked or lived in a snowy area for a long time feels on seeing something fresh and green for the first time”? Whatever you choose, happy writing!
Oh Horace, kind Horace…
Mr. Fletcher, my dear.
Such a claim to…
ignominious… glory?
Nature will castigate
(please read with care)
Those who don’t masticate
(again, scan slowly, this could go terribly wrong)
A chewer, he was,
Dear Horace, our Fletcher.
A chewer of such…
punctilious intentionality,
The proper noun-iness of his surname
morphed to movement – a verb:
To Fletcherize.
Oh Horace, dear Horace…
Did you,
“The Great Masticator”,
really aspire
to Fletcherize the world?
If so, you succeeded,
for a few years, at any rate.
If not, rest easy, my friend.
I’ve never heard the word in my life.
And suspect I shall not
Again.
defying atrophy 