The Verbal Equivalent of "Crunch"

I have been abusing
"screaming ninnies," misusing
it to describe my spastic, spasming,
painful periods of dystonia.

I say that I have the "screaming ninnies,"
which makes no sense at all.

Still, it's a habit,
and I'll likely continue to misuse it for lack
of words that feel right,
that encompass the realities of screaming
bloody murder on a cellular level,
my cells' uvulae all a-quiver,
feeling bat-shit nuts,
personifying inanity,
all at the same time:
ka-boom!

You stupid git!
I'm so sick.
Don't roll your goddamn eyes.

You want the pretense:
There is a problem list in play,
and as I work the problem,
solutions will come, the list will end, and voilà,
the problems have been put to rest, put to bed, are gone.

You stupid git!
I'm so sick.
Don't roll your goddamn eyes.

Oh, I am thankful, don't worry.
This poem, or that,
as you know, convert into top-notch
inspirational gratitude
with an at-the-ready daily devotional
doily, or - bate-the-breath -
an honest to goodness antimacassar..

Just pick a poem, any poem, read it, and be glad.
Rejoice, rejoice,
rejoice, I say, in the poem.

While screaming obscenities last evening,
I got tickled,in that Southern way,
in the vernacular of greens and hot sauce.
Giggling, weeping, and yelling,
simultaneously.  (The simultaneity of things
is the rip tide in this, my ocean.)

Curse words are satisfying
but somehow all the seats were pews,
all the books psalters, every top
ten hit a hymn..

So, of course, I called out "shitake mushrooms"
over and over, laughing at such
a honed wit
(because laughter demands
an indirect object).

You stupid git!
I'm so sick.
Don't roll your goddamn eyes.

I can't stop talking when I am this sick.
Or I cannot cease the saying of
the same phrases over and over,
and rarely can I sustain conversation
that doesn't reek of, well, onions.

Oh, all right, desperation. That doesn't reek of desperation.
I'm hungry. I'm so sick,
You stupid git.

Replace "screaming ninnies" and "shitake mushrooms,"
all to lose your goddamn rolling eyes.

When "altered" in intensive care,
I wore the world out with "O, God"
exclamations and "O, Dear God" moans.
The result was one crazy Me
screaming to another crazy Me:
"Shut up! Shut up!
God ain't here right now!"

You stupid, goddamn eye-rolled git,
I am so sick.

Further rumination on ninny would yield little.
then as now.
We should honor, though,
the prominence of the gerund
because this term is, frankly, very
verbal, hyperactive, and
stuck that way, like a gerund.

Yes, exactly.
Like Flaubert's Bovary dancing at the ball,
all in the imperfect.

A waltz, hayseeds in high collar.

The ear must be pleased and satisfied.
There needs to be texture,
the aural and verbal equivalent of *crunch*,
You stupid, stupid git.

Cathy Lomax: Swirling and twirling through movie ballrooms

© 2013 L. Ryan