A is for Abstruse

Image courtesy of  google:legaljuice.com

It escapes me how it all started

I mean, these big words I carry around

The first time I used fundamental

I was expressing a point on the weather

Fundamental weather, I said

That was back in the day—in Class Six to be exact

This affair didn’t start yesterday

Of that we need to be clear:

I once combined four synonyms in a row

Tucked romantically in a love flow

I even had the audacity to squeeze in

Caranx lugubris ( A black jack, I learnt later)

Smack in the middle of a love sentence

(Forgive me, O dear reader, the ghosts in our closets!)

I read books not for knowledge’s sake

But to lift heavy words which cranes couldn’t pull

And somehow utilized them in some

Class discussion on the alkanes and alkynes

If they fit, I worried not

And now in my old age, in exasperation

I could shout iambic pentameter

To a rowdy youth in the streets

Of course he would be offended

What with a scowl creasing my face

Littered in my shack house

Will be torn Collegiate Dictionary, Thesaurus

A Paperback on World’s Most Difficult Words

And in equal measure scattered papers

All evidence of who I am

Latin defines me

I make pronouncing a caelo usque ad centrum

Sound like chicken fodder

Latin begot some of us

We make language spin

Speaking of which,

What a prenominal-herculian-ardous-whopper-of-a-poem

Has this old-geezer written?

C) Lorot Salem 2011

For  a prompt from Poets United Thursday Think Tank # Your First