Back-slide

BACK-SLIDE, v.t. To join another communion.

2008 Update:  To repent too soon.

September song

The days are growing shorter

And the heat is not so cruel

Labor Day has come and gone

I've shelved my garden tools.

But the Autumn has its herald

As every other season,

Not colored leaves, nor horsemen,

Nor sextants, rhyme or reason.

For Autumn's unreliable

And the banner of its choosing:

Chicago's teams, still in first place,

Have finally started losing.

SLUMP, n.  Regression to the mean, submission to the dismal.

Bard

BARD, n.  A person who makes rhymes.  The word is one if the numerous aliases under which the poet seeks to veil his identity and escape opprobrium.

2008 Update:  Someone who writes prose not by ear but by nose, typing out prosaically what he hums o'er the keys.

Bed-Quilt

BED-QUILT, n. The exterior covering of a bed. Sometimes called charity.

2008 Update: A comforter with which we celebrate the simple past, under which we may hide from an indecipherable future.

The Unionville Chronicles

Final Canto

The final episode, read by a rogue horse of faith.  Click on John Henry to hear.

Or click on the Armies of The Beasties to read along.  I have no idea what, if anything, will appear in this space next week but I got five dollars says it won't rhyme.

Humanity

HUMANITY, n.  The human race, collectively, exclusive of the anthropoid poets.

2008 Update:  The nephews and nieces of Cain and Abel.

Hatchet

HATCHET, n. A young axe, known among Indians as a Thomas-hawk.  

2008 Update:  The thirteenth rose.

next to of course god america i (e.e., you're dead, too)

"next to of course god america i

bow thee down in humility to some

principles that fill an innocence pie

and endorse thy better, higher bunkum

Should all the sins of my neighbors cease and

desist, yet will i denounce the cowards

love for exotic spite and grief and sand

that we send heroic soldiers towards

yea, though i walk through exalted valley

i shall fear no law nor strange allahu

but love my country with all my called lust

and leave my virtue outside the alley

to do in dark what thou hast me to do"

his golden words he shed like scraps of rust

AMBIVALENCE, n.  The provocation for applause.

"Here lies the body of the Republican Party

Corrupt, and generally speaking, hardy." -Ambrose Bierce, 1882

Hades

HADES, n. The lower world; the residence of departed spirits; the place where the dead live.

Among the ancients the idea of Hades was not synonymous with our Hell, many of the most respectable men of antiquity residing there in a very comfortable kind of way. Indeed, the Elysian Fields themselves were a part of Hades, though they have since been removed to Paris. When the Jacobean version of the New Testament was in process of evolution the pious and learned men engaged in the work insisted by a majority vote on translating the Greek word "Aides" as "Hell"; but a conscientious minority member secretly possessed himself of the record and struck out the objectional word wherever he could find it. At the next meeting, the Bishop of Salisbury, looking over the work, suddenly sprang to his feet and said with considerable excitement: "Gentlemen, somebody has been razing 'Hell' here!" Years afterward the good prelate's death was made sweet by the reflection that he had been the means (under Providence) of making an important, serviceable and immortal addition to the phraseology of the English tongue.

2008 Update: Protected by a three-headed dog, ruled by a single-minded king and his ambivalent wife, a vast underground mythological collection of dead ambitions and thriving confusions analogous to the modern mom-and-pop business enterprise boondoggle.

Hovel

HOVEL, n. The fruit of a flower called the Palace.

Twaddle had a hovel,
Twiddle had a palace;
Twaddle said: "I'll grovel
Or he'll think I bear him malice" —
A sentiment as novel
As a castor on a chalice.

Down upon the middle
Of his legs fell Twaddle
And astonished Mr. Twiddle,
Who began to lift his noddle.
Feed upon the fiddle-
Faddle flummery, unswaddle
A new-born self-sufficiency and think himself a [mockery.]

—G.J.

2008 Update: The childhood home of a captain of industry, the current home of his or her spouse and the future home of his or her children.

Rabbit, rabbit