Fred Aiken Writing

Category: Poetry

Ctrl-Alt-Delete the Dictionary

Daily writing prompt
If you could permanently ban a word from general usage, which one would it be? Why?
I spill over the dictionary, wondering
what should go, what should be left out,
to never seen or heard from again,

how, I ask no one in particular, can I make the dictionary--
this massive, bloated, under-utilized piece of academic erudition--
great again?

make these words great again,
make them mean something, anything, yet again, again, and again,

and then it hits me, like an energy-efficient light bulb shattering into my skull,
luminescence forcefully making its way through the synapses in my head
until i finally know--i know what to do,

just three quick taps on the keyboard,
ctrl-alt-delete
the whole damn thing

that way I can start again,
with my own damn version of the dictionary, a great dictionary,
The Great Dictionary, I'll call it,

perhaps this time,
I'll finally be able to remember all the words in it,
but I also wouldn't hold my breath

ship shape

i lost the plot in the mixture of some crazy equation
composed of unreal numbers floating around
here somewhere, i don’t know quite where,
i’ve been looking every which way,
but nothing seems to add up
when the story doesn’t quite fit this shape

toy sky

great sorrow made from lego blocks
stacked as high as they can go,
in mismatched colors, odd shapes,
boundless, upwards, onwards, one must go!
to find the hand building up a toy
made to think the sky’s the limit,
only to forget the vacuum bearing down