This month on Touched By Words, it is my great pleasure to feature a guest poet and my dear friend Sandra Parrott.  I’ve heard dozens of Sandra’s poems and prose, but this one is one of my favorites.  If I may suggest you read it out loud – it is fun to read!  You find yourself reading quickly and perhaps even stopping to take a breath and chuckle at her very creative way with words!  Enjoy!

A Way With Words ~ by Sandra Parrott

If words were money, I’d be richer than The Donald.  Real estate king and buffoon billionaire, extraordinaire of the millennium.  I roll in words, every one I utter turns to gold.  Even the little words, like on, it,at if, he and she.  They count, they pile up like mountains of change, add up to dollar bills.

I love the quiet mid-size words, house, heart scissors, banana, begonia, duck, doctor, ditto, verbena azalea, cicada.  What is it about the word cicada?  I love that sound.  Crickets just cricket, but cicadas serenade us, cicade us!

Let’s pile up happy words, sad words, mad and glad words, angry, spiteful, furious, words that shake our foundations, make the earth tremble.  We’ll get some verbs going too, we’ll run, laugh, leap, fly, cry, jump, jiggle.  Let’s build, create, play, ponder, smile with style, mingle and tingle, wiggle, giggle and nod.

Words make the world go round.   His words thrilled me, chilled me, killed me, touched my soul, broke my heart, made me weak, made me strong.  Words of wisdom, words of rage, words of comfort, words of sage.  Important words that define an age.  Mighty words, flighty words, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words…..

I don’t like tentative, wavering words, throw them all away.  Forget sort of, maybe, might, almost, perhaps and try.  I maybe, perhaps might try to write something. What does that mean?  Nothing.  While we’re at it, let’s get ride of should of, could of and would of.  Better to be strong, clear and direct.  No equivocating!

And what about words with insidious intent, ugly words that distort, confuse and misdirect.  Words we wish we’d never heard?  Mediocre, maladroit, stupid, crushing words, bloody, bovine, oozing, decrepit, rancid sick words.  Enough.  They’re so unlike these pretty precious words, sunshine, languor, lullaby, darling, aurora, lily, ruby, laugh, spark, lark, let’s go to the park after dark.  You can’t stop me.  I’m rolling in words!  Wallowing, frolicking, swimming.  I do, I will, I must, I shall prevail.  You can’t make me, I stand firm, I won’t, I shan’t, I can’t, I’ll dig in forever and never give up!

These favorite words, fill my mouth when I say them.  So meaty, beaty and bouncy, serendipity, a happy accident, an oxymoron of a word if I ever heard one.  Onomatopoeia, sounds exactly like what it describes.  A word that rings like a bell, buzzes, creaks, peals, purrs, clangs, honks, snaps and sizzles.  Boggle, boggles me.  Scrumptious, a delectable buttery word, that melts in your mouth (not in your hand).

Clandestine, its just between you and me, baby.  Hypnagogic, a magical state of mind that hovers between sleeping and waking.  And the stratosphere, well, its far greater than the mind can possibly comprehend.

Effervescent, gossamer, radiant, mesmerizing, crystalline, luscious, lustrous, butterfly hues of aubergine, ultramarine, lilac and lemon.  These are a few of my favorite, maverick, treasured words.