By Wilda Morris
(or This Vocabulary Is to Die For)
When push comes to shove, I have to admit,
we spend a lot of time shooting the breeze, kicking around ideas,
pointing out the ones that—in our judgment—bombed,
We want to give it a shot, take a stab at impressing
everyone. We want folks to be blown away so we go in
with guns blazing, try to rally the troops to our view.
We carry on like Nazis, leading the charge against the neighbor
next door who always disagrees with us.
We go ballistic, say she’s a pistol, but she’s shooting blanks.
We tell her to bite the bullet and read the resources we give her;
we’ll even drive her to the library for more ammunition
so she can join the battle for truth as we see it.
We’ll give her a killer smile but keep shooting holes in her arguments.
Still hoping she’s a pushover, we’ll repeat all our bullet points.
To be brutally honest, it’s overkill. Someday,
if she doesn’t hit the road, she’ll quit rolling
with the punches, give us a kick in the pants,
bring out the big guns. Everything will blow up in our faces.
Wilda Morris is workshop chair of Poets and Patrons and a former president of the Illinois State Poetry Society. For three years she was the chair of the Stevens Poetry Manuscript Competition of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. Her poems have found homes in numerous anthologies, webzines, and print publications, including Califragile, The Ocotillo Review, and Journal of Modern Poetry. She has won awards for formal poetry, free verse and haiku. Her first poetry book was Szechwan Shrimp and Fortune Cookies: Poems from a Chinese Restaurant. Pequod Poems: Gamming with Moby-Dick, celebrating the 200th anniversary of Herman Melville, was publish in February 2019 by Kelsay Books. Her poetry blog at wildamorris.blogspot.com provides a monthly contest for other poets.
Photo by Mitya Ivanov on Unsplash.
Share your thoughts about this.