Another Poetry Assignment!

Ok, one of this week’s assignments: Spend some time with a dictionary and make a list of ten-twenty of your favourite words. Write a poem using as many words from the list as you can. If you choose this poem, include the list.

(Ok, I admit, I chose my words before going to the dictionary, but I already have lists of favourite words. I’m a word geek, I readily admit it.)

Anyhow, this is what I came up with:

Orthostatic Hypotension

I’m whirling, swirling up instead of down
making my stomach flop-flip and bump into my heart,
leaving my organs all akimbo and defensive.

Downside up, I’m falling or am I climbing
into myself, embracing the serenity
that you promised was there.

Keep your eyes on the cerulean skies
as I evolve out of this masquerade of elysian
peace into a chamomile-scented bohemian me.

Coriander and nigella in the peripherals of my vision, colours
fluctuating, burgandywhitegreen stripes spin an endlessly
oscillating kaleidoscope, asymmetrical like the best of us.

Be wary of fearful symmetry burning bright its
promise of perfection. Pompeii was perfect-
ly preserved but trapped forever mid-stride,

leaving the impression of a mobius-strip trip never to be complete.
And so we sing their elegy to our children in the dark the neonates
who survived teratogenic ash by finding the right womb at the right time.

We circle our own lives and like Pandora entranced by
Mercury’s box, we long to untie the golden cords in
hopes of finding the beauty that must certainly lay within.

Yet when the container is flung open we are thrown
into a discombulated heap, crying out in surprise at the contents.
It is then that we discover we can be found only by coming out

into the glaring world, screaming our joy at the realization that the
burning in our lungs is not from acrid air, but from breathlessness
caused by our own acceptance of the mercurial beings that weve become.
1.23.05/12.35pm
©panic!button productions, 2005

Word List (i got some of my words from my Taber’s Medical Dictionary. hehe)

akimbo
azure
bohemian
cerulean
chamomile
cobalt
coriander
discombobulate
elegy
elysian
evolve
exsanguinations
floccinaucinihilipilification (this one’s from J!)
fluctuate
masquerade
mercurial
mercury
mobius strip
neonate
orthostatic hypotension
oscillates
Pandora
Pompeii
popliteal
serene
teratogen