Let's Go Play In The Dictionary

Start each day with a poo and a poem and you won't go far wrong.

As a general Rule For Living I suppose that ranks alongside my 'Always live east of where you work.'
Half a century of learning from my own dumb mistakes has given me my own set of rules. As for those two: living east of where I work saves me getting blinded by sun-glare off wet roads on my way to and from the office and starting each day with a poo and a poem clears both body and mind ready for whatever horrors the day might throw at me.

Not groundbreaking, I know, but an accumulation of such nuggets helps me stumble along without bumping into too many sharp things.

This morning's poem (I'll spare you this morning's poo) turned out to be Mandrakes For Supper, by James K. Baxter (am I alone in ascribing ludicrous names to people who insert intrusive initials in their signatures? James Baxter has this morning been variously called Kleptomania, Kniphofia, Kimberley and Knickers and it's his own fault).

Anyhoo … His poem:

Mandrakes For Supper

Memory feeds us on a prison diet
Of bits and scraps. 'Remember Mr. X-,
That simple solemn man, so deathly quiet;

'And Sally Z-, compounded of raw sex
And circumstance' - 'Ah yes, her corn-gold hair …'
A land where roams Tyrannosaurus Rex,

The giant lizard, calloused by despair -
In Nowhere I received my education
(If memory can be trusted) mooching there

Like Dante's ghost, among a faceless nation.
The white antarctic Gorgon was my mentor:
Her cloudy arms, her eyes of desolation

Sisterly gazing from the whirlwind's centre,
Received, embraced my naked intuition.
The town of Nilburg too I shrank to enter

(If memory serves me right) and wept contrition
For indistinct all-but-committed crimes
In gelding-rooms and caves of parturition.

Yet undeniably I laughed at times
With those who shared my headless hullaballoo:
Fogeaters, Dwarfs, Green Quims and Paradigms.

Cellars of Nilburg! how I hated you,
Your Ixion wheels, hot frogs and icy toads,
Your existential climate where I grew

Into an adult Mandrake. (Memory loads
My plate with mushrooms.) But I woke at length
And left you, travelling light by mountain roads
To elsewhere; drank at desert wells; gained strength.


I don't know why I like that quite as much as I do. Perhaps the quirky rhyming rhythm, perhaps the freewheeling imagery or the playfully obsessive gallimaufry of punctuation, but more likely my childish word-glee, born of a love for Anglo-Saxon poetry that revels in such words as 'Fogeaters' and capers with the joy of 'hot frogs and icy toads.'
I do love to play with words and this poem set me up rather nicely for the day.

For the year, in fact as I am (according to my calendar and birth certificate) fifty-two today.
Oh, frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
Or perhaps that should be: 'Oh, bugger! I've wasted another smegging year.'

Either way, I'm off for a swim in the River Lexicon with Fogeaters, hot frogs and icy toads.
Care to join me?