Stubborn Words Fight Back

I –             

not thinking of you
this pronoun’s focus is me
egotistical

write –     

purple ink flowing
with the movement of a pen
stubborn words fight back

on –          

what lies between
the switching of on and off
no prepositions

these –     

not those this or that
materialist humans
always possession

spindrift –  

spat from cresting waves
Leucothea’s laundry’s clean
spinning on a gale

pages –

a blank collection
no words on which to hang them
poems are waiting

Kim M. Russell, 28th May 2026

For the last Meeting the Bar of May2026, at the dVerse Poets Pub we are taking a fine line down with Laura.

Laura says that poets and painters define the lyrical line, which is a fundamental element in our art, in much the same way and yet it is rendered so very differently, to ‘convey emotion, movement, and energy…characterized by their fluid, expressive, and dynamic quality’.

As examples of poems about definition, Laura has shared Cynthia Hogue’s poem, ‘to label something something’ and a poem by Laura Da, ‘The Meadow Views: Sword and Symbolic History.

Our challenge is to take a lyrical line and define it word by word in an acrostic. We should choose one of the given lines from the most lyrical poet, Dylan Thomas OR  take a favourite line from our own poetry (and link or reference it). We should write each word alongside its definition, which can be any style we choose, such as an American sentence, a haiku, a triplet, forgetting the exactitude of the dictionary definition and letting our imagination wander through each meaning, by association, by sound,  by interpretation,  by what it means to us. 

I chose ‘I write on these spindrift pages’.

26 thoughts on “Stubborn Words Fight Back”

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