Distractions by J Vincent

Another month has disappeared. Days seem to melt away whether you’re having fun or not. Whether you’re writing or not. And I’m not, writing that is. Why am I not writing? A four letter word. Pain. It should be in all caps. They say write what you know but most of what I know these days is that four letter word. I keep thinking of four letter adjectives to put with it but even I can’t stretch that to call it writing.
What keeps me from writing? There’s the inability to concentrate. Pain telescopes my world into a very narrow field. I, unfortunately, am at the center of that field. I play games to distract myself. They only require short term memory skills and not the ability to hold the threads of story lines together to form a cohesive tale. If I were writing now I’d read like Dostoyevsky.  Not in the classical author mind-set but in the incomprehensible one. Crime and Punishment were a punishment for me back in college. I often wondered what the man was trying to say. I prefer my readers not feel similarly about me.
So write about what I know. I know a lot about words--meanings and pronunciations. So I’m borrowing from another writer to lighten your day and teach indirectly about English word pronunciations.

English is the Queerest Language
By Anonymous
We’ll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox should be oxen, not oxes.
Then one fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of mouse should never be meese,
You may find a lone mouse or a whole nest of mice,
But the plural of house is houses, not hice.

If the plural of man is always called men,
Why shouldn’t the plural of pan be called pen?
The cow in the plural may be cows or kine,
But a bow if repeated is never called bine,
And the plural of vow is vows, never vine.

If I speak of a foot and you show me your feet,
And I give you a boot would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth, and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn’t the plural of booth be called beeth?

If the singular’s this and the plural is these,
Should the plural of kiss ever be nicknamed keese?
Then one may be that and three would be those,
Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,
And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.

We speak of a brother, and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren,
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine she, shis and shim,

So the English, I think, you all will agree,
Is the queerest language you ever did see.

I've attempted to put a recording of the poem at Queerest Language