Grim warning to word addicts

Candidly

---

"Take two words after each meal"
is what the instructions said.
But one day I dared, and took four.
(My brother once took three;
it did him no harm;
he hardly speaks to me.)
I thought I should be eloquent but safe.

Next day I went back to the doctor.
I was a Shivering Wreck.
"They don't work any more," I mouthed.

He looked up, grave, consulting the dictionary.
"Me give strong medicine" he said,
gingerly handing a jar
of gleaming polysyllables to me. I couldn'
t wait to get them on my tongue.
They stuck like new-mixed caramel.

I raided the Oxford Dictionary at night,
beginning with the tasty Ps.
It soon was alarmingly thin,
People were at a loss for words
(they looked them up and the page was bare)
but far too polite to tell me
that only the Bs were left.

One day a grammarian came.
"Who?" asked this august fellow.
"Whom," I replied, satisfactorily.

"Go under the ground for a rest"
he said. "Be like the worms -
don't mention it."

So I went to the Home for
Relief of Poor Verbal Habits.
The fiends had electric dictionaries
that shocked me with four-letter words.

I tried to escape. I sneaked
red letters from a calendar
and passed as a mailbox.
Just as I was aout to be delivered
they returned me - I'd eaten the address.

But alas! Now I'm trapped here forever.
I ate the full stop
and I can't reach the end of my sentence

Dennis List