Portmanteau Redux
Politic
prose begets a pose:
Prosody
poseurs
Mimicking
moderators;
First-time
offenders
Parroting
mentors;
Orators
spouting
Declamatory
figures;
Officers
routing
Defamatory
clotures;
Miscreants
making
Fake
disclosures.
Everybody
knows:
Lovelorn
sighers,
Late
town-criers,
Wave
good-byers,
Seat-of-pants
flyers,
Hot
bread-bringers,
Cold
bell-ringers,
Harpy
harbingers,
Sycophantic
singers:
Everybody
knows
It’s a
pose.
Everybody
knows
How it
goes.
There
she blows:
Ship of
State,
Running
late;
Ship of
Fools
Skirting
rules;
Everybody
knows
What
summer will show:
Banner
of the Lily,
Emblem
of the Rose.
Pay
your token
Nothing
broken
English
spoke
West of
Hoboken
Nothing
sacred,
Just
forsaken:
Patriots’
patois
Easily
mistaken
For
glossolalia
Manchurian:
Epicureans’
Conversions
During
duck and cover
Diversions.
Bodacious
banter,
Manic
canter.
Arms
race:
Say the
grace.
Disco
nights and
Détente days
Never
cease to amaze.
Read
that rag?
What’s
your bag?
Take
down the flag
After
the Fourth:
Fold it
of course.
Stars
and stripes,
Disco
nights,
Flapping
for real,
Glory’s
pinwheel.
Rainbow
flag glorious,
Synecdoche
victorious:
Save it
for display
On
Pride Day.
Take it
on a trip,
Take it
on board ship;
Unfurl
it in the wind,
Hoist
it, Wave it,
Reel it
in,
Then
take it down below
&
Wrap
with a bow:
Le drapeau
Bantams’
anthems
Roosters’
boosters
Bugle
musters
General
Custers
Addle-pating
Battle-baiting
Slogan-shouting
Cudgel-clouting
* *
*
Cosmic
conference:
Stars
to reference
Moon’s
circumference,
Planets
to measure
Sun’s
diameter;
Planetary
happenstance
To
preface by chance
Andromeda’s
comeuppance.
Pack,
unpack
Your
traveling case:
Flag,
Notepad,
Clothes.
Man of
Time,
Man of
Space
Pack,
unpack your
Suitcase:
Stars,
Planets,
Space
race
Man of
the Universe
Man of
Quantum Bits
Pack,
unpack
Your
valise:
Quarks,
Strange,
Galaxies.
Pack,
unpack your valise:
La Verité,
La Valse,
Virtualities.
Man of
purpose,
Engagé
Traveling
to the city
On a
summer’s day:
Speedtrain,
iPad,
Peet’s.
Bringing
succor,
Forging
trust
Briefcase
clutched,
Do what
you must;
Man of
purpose,
Flesh
and bone,
Pack,
unpack
Your
Gladstone:
Polity,
Policy,
Legacy
Anglophone.
Artist
mercurial,
On the
go,
Landscape
manorial,
Country
sloe,
Prescient
Revolution
Becoming
Evolution
Pack,
unpack
Your
portmanteau
Disclose
your cache:
Pack,
unpack:
What do
we see?
Liberty,
Equality,
Fraternity.
* *
*
Mrs.
Scrabble,
Major
Babel,
Let the
rabble
Think
cliché.
Magnify
letters
Comprising
words,
Remember
speeches
You
have heard,
Note
the words
Comprising
stories,
Know
the Classics’
Amber
glory,
Recite
Shakespeare
Word
for word.
You
discover words
Wingèd,
feathered, plumed,
Rare
epideictic birds
By love
consumed:
To
enhance survival’s dance;
Species
of nouns and their adjectival adjuncts:
Small
singing leaves of lexicons
Crisp
with adverbs and pronouns:
Self-replicating
multiplexes:
Multilingual
reflexes,
Gene
pools reflected
In
words elected by the tribes,
Collected,
corrected by the scribes.
Pack, unpack
Your
portmanteau
Now
from the recess indigo
Tell us
By all
that’s fun and true,
What’s
inside?
Give us
a clue!
But Babel began to babble,
And Scrabble shook her head
As pack, unpack they did,
Till finally Scrabble said:
This
portmanteau’s magic,
Immortal––
Don’t
chortle
Like a
bicurious cyborg
Hungry
for a Cheeseburg.
Skip
breakfast & lunch,
Fill up
on brunch.
Avoid
mist and drizzle:
Stay in
when it mizzles.
Our
words too flowing to melt,
Too elastic
to weld,
We let
their sub-parts join and meld.
Estimate,
Don’t
guesstimate,
The
vagaries of my
Simulcast
state:
Reprobate
datacasting
Bombastic
podcasting,
Sitcom
replete with
Emo +
icons and snide + remarks:
(Emoticons
and snark).
Pack,
unpack
Your
bag, your tote,
Pack,
unpack
The
wag, the rote,
The
nag, the joke,
And
Allegory’s
Bright-hued
garden.
Pack,
unpack
The
anecdote,
The
palinode,
And
every syllable
Of
jargon.
But
when they tell you to unpack
A
metaphor like a knapsack,
So
‘Trailing clouds of glory’
Becomes
the start of Everyman’s story,
And ‘In
the middle of our life’s journey’
Becomes
a medieval tele-tourney,
And
‘They flee from me,/ Who sometime did me seek’
Becomes
the story of a geek––
Beware!
Beware!
For Jabberwocky’s better
Than a
dead letter
Unsealed
too late
To
learn its fate.
So
listen to the rhythm of the falling words,
Dream
their shimmering meaning;
Catch
their drift, lift them from the stream,
But
don’t stop dreaming.
And if
someone tells you to unpack
A Starry Night,
Expedite
your exit––say good-bye:
Pack
your bag:
Clothes,
Notepad,
Flag,
Adding
a piece of starry sky.
Say
good-bye, hurry, go:
Pack
up:
Drapeau,
Portmanteau.
And
from the living word stream
Take
words that colorfast your dream.
* * *
For Alex and Devon
:
;
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