At the edge of the foolscap,
The fool’s cap
Marks the dot.
Full stop.

Dive off the em—dash,
Leap into the lines,
Between the orphaned ideas,
Comma,

There, lies the truth,
Hidden within the obscurity,
Of irrational words…
…that make intuitive sense.
Soft return.

Sever the common-sensical non-sense and
Savour the nonsensical licentiousness
Of simmeringly sensory similes
Laden with alliterative ellipses…
Adorned with exclamation points!

Explain the inexplicable,
Proclaim the unprovable,
Play in the prodigiousness of improbabilities
Possessed by apostrophes’
New possibilities and paragraphs.

Pause in the pretence of potentialities,
Pretend the end is nigh-t not to-day-te,
Rest inside the parenthetical parentheses,
Of perchance patterns,
Sleep within the vacuous silence of zen,
The en–d.

Notes:

Today, ‘foolscap’ refers to lined, legal-sized paper, but the term apparently harkens back to the 15th century when paper of these dimensions included a watermark in the outline of a fool’s (aka a jester’s) hat with bells. Why that choice of watermark, I wonder?

Playing with words is so much more fun than working. Another work of ‘productive procrastination’ akin to e. e. cummings.
D.Lynn

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