30. too dapper for words

Natty grammarian on the prowl









I went to China just to prove a case

Was researching the intricacies of a certain letter

Or quaint word

Plus the R had gone absent and without pay

Anyhow my point had to be made.



And then ah

The freshness of the lips of the ladies

The ladies’ lips’ freshness

Smiling at my smartness

The fragrance of new morning roses

The new morning roses’ fragrances from the thick pink lovely ladies’ lips

Smiling at my elegance

Me dressed all in leather

The leather black and shiny

Uncreased as shrugging I said: well

The cow was already dead and her meat eaten you know?



Distinguished fellow indeed me

As I walked along the thronged avenues

That linked the several museums.



The drabness of the museums

The shabby halls and corridors

The disproportionate cost or unaffordable dearness of the lousy catalogs.



Bought nothing and yet

I got my prize among millions.



It was alive and kicking.

I heard it from the ladies

Breathing roses at my delighted face.



Though short

It had innumerable meanings.



I think it was the dreaming word WU.



At the beginning it was a bug

A beetle on its back

Its three legs wavering in the air trapped inside a tub

But then I saw the word upside down

And the tub was reversed and the bug with three legs

Walked fast and away...



As fast as I’m escaping from this Chinese poem

A might barney-like

Clickety-clack

Plumb cryptic perhaps

As I quitted the premises

The forward ladies in the front row ready to grab and tangle with

My two wu-wus

And my third leg

Too elegant to resist

Too dapper for words.