Having started, unintentionally, a bit of a Facebook skirmish, by use of conviction, but colored by misunderestimations and mutagenic infornography, I find myself scrambling for meaning on a Saturday afternoon in late February. Or maybe scrambling to be understood. Appletinis won't help. No, an Epiphatini is definitely called for. A big one.
POSTMANTERRORISM
by Nick Lantz
Would it make a difference to say we suffered
from affluenza in those days? Could we blame
Reaganomics, advertainment, the turducken
and televangelism we swallowed by the sporkful,
all that brunch and Jazzercise, Frappuccinos
we guzzled on the Seatac tarmac, sexcellent
celebutantes we ogled with camcorders while
our imagineers simulcast the administrivia
of our alarmaggedon across the glocal village?
Would it help to say that we misunderestimated
the effects of Frankenfood and mutagenic smog
to speculate that amid all our infornography
and anticipointment, some crisitunity slumbered
unnoticed in a roadside motel? Does it count
for nothing that we are now willing to admit
that the animatronic monster slouching across
the soundstage of our tragicomic docusoap
was only a distraction? Because now, for all our
gerrymandering, the anecdata won't line up for us.
When we saw those contrails cleaving the sky
above us, we couldn't make out their beginning
or their end. What, in those long hours of ash,
could our appletinis tell us of good or of evil?
Posts
Pick up a copy of RIddley Walker by Russell Hoban for some great language mangling, though the style of this poem is more in the line of portmanteau which means a two part luggage and a two part word.. here is a great list of them: http://users.tinyonline.co.uk/gswithenbank/portmant.htm
ReplyDeleteAlso a quick look at the WIKI gave me this nugget just for you: "There is a tradition of linguistic purism in Icelandic and neologisms are frequently created from pre-existing words. Tölva ("computer") is a portmanteau of tala ("digit; number") and völva ("seeress").
Chessley