Caco
I knew her in the protest days
when she had the cacoethes loquendi
Oh the sadness of cacoepy when
she mumbles tripe into the belly of a text message
never speaking in a sentence that would echo
through the empty speakers’ square
where birds and I
could hear some rhetorical question
that I profoundly would, with chalice aforethought,
mischievously answer in basso profundo
“Share my wine of fictional dictum in a cup”
and she would pronounce us “Huh whaa?”
— Douglas Gilbert
Poetry and Stuff 
It’s kind of annoying that there seems to be no easy way to learn to use a new word in a sentence, especially a rare one. If you didn’t know what the word “lightning” meant you could search for the word “lightning” and you’d get all kinds of discussions and many sentences using it in context so you could get a feel for how to use it. But if you search for a word that isn’t used much, all you get is a list of dictionaries and I’ve already looked up the word in a dictionary and don’t know how to use it. If you’re totally unfamiliar with a new word, you really can’t use it safely just based on the definition in the dictionary. So I wrote this poem even though I have no idea how to use these words. They should be somewhere in a essay, but I think whenever a search turns up a list of 50 dictionaries it means that no one ever uses it except the typist at the dictionary company I suppose. Well, so maybe I’m free to use it in the wrong way until someone speaks up. “Speak now or forever become archaic”
Oddly enough, i read this from the ‘latest posts’ page and then looked up three of the words in google search because i wanted to make sure i knew exactly what they meant. Then i clicked into the poem and I saw your comment about the online dictionaries. I noticed the same thing. It kind of gives you a vague understanding of the words in a sense but not quite enough to feel comfortable with sentence usage. Maybe that’s why a lot of people use the same words more often than incorporating new words they’ve learned into every day communication. And when they learn a new word and feel comfortable with it, it becomes over-used. Take the word ‘epic’ for example. That’s my son’s favorite new word to use. Everything is ‘epic’ these days. And while I like the word epic, i tend to try to use it for really only truly epic things. I’m not sure my chicken enchiladas are truly considered epic. ha!
I like your new poem though…it’s great! Especially the ending 3 lines with the ‘basso profundo’ and the ‘fictional dictum’ and it made me giggle with the “Huh whaa?” I also liked being able to see those words that i was confused about used in a poem. Oh, i gotta get to work…
I’ve heard that if you take a chicken enchilada to the North Pole and eat it while staying in a plastic cube while a Polar Bear attacks and tries to break in to eat you, and then if you continue on with the energy of a second enchilada to sail the arctic seas until the Sirens of Greek Legend try to lure you to crash onto an iceberg but then, if you resist the temptation and slaughter the Cyclops and the Dragon of Chios and the Dragon of Tibet and the Dragon of Mount Everest, and travel to Peru to find ancient secret books of the Mayans,then these in totality would be the whole enchilada of an epic adventure if the cumin were pure and the tortilla was blessed by Mayan priests emerging from secret caves where artifacts from Homer and Atlantis were kept and where “never is heard a discouraging word and the skies don’t look like flying enchiladas all day”…..”home,home on the range, where the deer eat enchiladas all day.” My “Ode to an Olive” was sort of Epic.
giggling! Maybe my enchiladas are epic when they’re included in an adventure like that! I love it. Although I’m not sure if deer would like chicken enchiladas, aren’t they vegetarian? Maybe i could make them a nice leafy green type enchilada with corn added in or something? Yes…i think your “Ode to an Olive” definitely falls into the epic range. That’s quite a feat. I don’t think I’ve ever truly done an epic-anything. Oh well…I guess my ADHD is too much to accomplish epic stuff, hehe…
I became disillusioned when they changed all the terms and slogans. Originally, I think, they were only talking a lot about Attention Deficit Disorder(ADD). That worked out neatly: someone said, “I have ADD.”
I said, “I have ‘Subtract’. ”
I think they’re much more hyper when they’re making up names then they are in understanding and giving solutions. Hmm, “Super Underwhelming Bull Tripe Ruminating Alternate Character Trait”
Oh that’s not right. I think I have MULTIPLY.
I like the Subtract. (hehe) So what does MULTIPLY stand for?
Yeah I think they just like to know what to call something. Then they can make a new pill for it and everyone is happy. Solutions? What’s that? You can’t just fix or cure something because you can’t sell medicine or expensive tests or hospital stays to someone who doesn’t need it. (Hope you can detect my silly sarcasm in my typing tone). I became disillusioned with the medical industry in whole when they left me very sick for 5 years with something as simple as lactose intolerance. I was in and out of hospitals, it pretty much messed up my life for a while.