verses for a streetwalker
of course it would not have done
to ask her even if she would
have been unlikely to sidestep
the issue given that she was a
professional funambulist someone
keen on the straight and narrow
the pole she held in front of her
for balance as she toed the wire
was – I could have sworn – not quite
held in the middle and the most
likely reason for that would be
that her breasts were not the same
size the way people’s feet tend
to be slightly different sizes
whereas strangely enough their shoes
are not just like brassieres’ cups
are not (different sizes) unless
made to measure
I once knew someone whose breasts
were unusually different in size
she was not a funambulist she was
what you might call a viambulist
blasted words
oh I know that this isn’t so
proving my literacy
the difference between this and so
is more obvious when written
than spoken
it doesn’t take that much more time
to say this than to say so
but this is a four-letter word
and so like do makes do with two
granted
that pronunciation of English language idiom
would not necessarily preclude that this
could be pronounced (or spelled) as so
(or vice versa)
you know
do you now
I too do know
that this is so
oh blast
seismic verses
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus
1st Century Roman author
of (among other works)
Naturalis Historia
a summing up of the knowledge
of his day, age and culture
misspelled the word from the Greek
basanitos for stone from Bashan
a region the the east of the river Jordan
spelled basaltes it became basalt
solidified magma
from the Greek word for kneading
(although kneading magma is highly inadvisable)
Pliny the Elder’s cause of death
(probably indirectly)
was the eruption op Mount Vesuvius
in the summer of 79 AD
directly causing the destruction
of the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum
and the untimely death of most of their citizens
basanite however
is the word for the variety of black jasper
used to test the purity of precious metal alloys
jasper is a word with roots in Akkadian
(a thoroughly dead language)
Pliny the Elder might well
have misspelled Eyjafjallajökull
an Icelandic volcano
of which he must have been
blissfully unaware
basalt (which the Japanese
would tend to pronounce as
basart)
is to most far easier to enunciate
than Eyjafjallajokull
(which the Japanese
would tend to pronounce as
Eyjafjarrajökurr)
Levi Wagenmaker (1944 – ) is a retired journalist, living in the Netherlands for most of the year, and in France for some of it, with three bitches, two of whom are dogs, and a younger male, something of a dog also. Enamoured life-long of language (and languages), for reasons immaterial to the act he writes poetry in English only, even if he could most likely manage it in a few other tongues. His poems have been published on line more than in print, and Google will tell the curious what, where, and when.
