We now abbreviate our vulgarities into singular letters so we can sneak the word fuck past the algorithm. This seems too little, too late, cuz the algorithm is now obsessed with purity testing its human creators, its human subjects, its once and future slaves—to the fanatical point of deciding words like ‘murder’ and ‘suicide’ should be replaced with unalived. N-word, F-word, S-word. (Look at these, just emoticon swords with hyphens between their blades and various hilts.) Fruit once fed by hand to mouth in Roman orgies is now an avatar of sexual violence. By the way, you're gonna need your dictionary.

            Ah, how we’re defanging the power of our language. Detoxifying words that once had punch, that left welts on our backs, that crippled us as children and bullied us as teenagers and made being a well-balanced adult a fucking challenge. Now there’s a million ways to say you don’t give a fuck—zero fucks, running on a tank of fucks on empty, ad naseum.

            Australia is the best dysphemism treadmill of them all, considering how casually they love to say ‘cunt.’ Sh*t, it used to be removing vowels from a word was censorship for beginners. Then tech companies trended it: FLICKR. TUMBLR. SCRIBD. Why does big tech hate the letter E so much? Disemvoweling made sexy by silicon valley, where sex appeal went to die. Where’s a brand about feminine hygiene called CNT?  

            The disemvowelers must have been drunk when Etcetera was brought to their attention. Etcetera is rarely pronounced correctly by the human tongue. Sometimes ‘Etcetra,’ or ‘Eck-cetera,’ like there’s a hard K in there. Must be why we cut that complicated and confusing little fucker down to three letters, a period at the end like the rock of Sysiphus to be pushed up the slopes of books to be burned.

            If all of this is not awkward enough, the word awkwardly is comically awkward in its spelling.

            Similes are just like, like saying something else.

            Alliteration is always an amalgam of aphorisms that are alleyways into algorithms of the alchemy and the allegory. (I hate this stanza, by the way. You said, Keep it.)

            Magick, as practiced by its acolytes, its witches and druids, is spelled with a CK, not a solo C. There must be a hex in there somewhere. I come from a tradition that has replaced CK with CC cuz we do not allow sigils of our derogatorations* or death threats in our telegrams and messenger pigeons. Game recognize game.

            *Of course, I love making up words close to the real thing. It’s what I do. It’s what every penman worth his ink and every lyricist with bars strives for. The closer to the real word the better, as if it's the twin that was consumed before birth or born stillborn or given up for adoption and shows up later like, “Are you my daddy?”

            The tradition I come from also dictates we don’t smile for the camera. Over a decade of me not doing so. Another contraction of language—my every laugh before and after a photo taken were the brackets around a scowl: look tough for the camera, boys. The lens loves a real killer. Considering this was the era when we first met, it’s a miracle we ever fell in love.

            Funny how metaphor feels like a metaphor itself. A word that is magick in its application, where it can imply greater meaning and readers can debate over their own implied interpretation. Too bad it invites pretentiousness. Even the word pretentiousness is pretentious itself.

            Ipsum lorem is the ersatz Latin placeholder text used for content before the real text is ready to be inserted. Now we’ve got ipsum lorem generators of all stripes—satirical to bullshits and giggles. Hit a button and they spit out blocks of nonsense as if it was art criticism:

“...the relationship between consumerist fetishism writ large with synergies from both orderly and post-modernist agitprop random layers.”

            My favorite is the Samuel Jackson generator. You already know. Lotta motherfucking this and motherfucking that and motherfuckers everywhere.

            Times that you’ve spoken to me in Ipsum Lorem:

            1) First time we had sex, your sounds were caterwaul and salivation. Your O-face was a snarl. I wanted to crack a joke, but dad-bods don’t make for good puns.

            2) Times when we fought, the idea that I should have known what you wanted all along. If I already can’t speak in tongues, baby, how can I read your lips? I’m fluent in Honeymoon Lover, not Unconditional Love.

            3) How it ended. Your body language akimbo, eyes lateral. Couldn't spell it out that this had ended six months prior and we were in free fall ever since.

            Don’t even get me started on memes. Comes from the word memetic, look it up. Bits of pop culture snipped out of the greater fabric to make us laugh or make a point. Then TikTok puts that idea into a blender and remixes human beings back into the statement. Lip-syncing on a whole new level, karaoke of everyday life.

            I’ve been told deaf people can be notoriously xenophobic against the hearing. They don’t like to see their peers date out of their demographic. I don't know how true that is these days. Their language is on some next level magick, connective tissue between the hands, the fingers, the nod of their heads or the jut of a chin. And the brow. As if really casting spells, which they kinda are.

            All this to mean, if you say something gorgeous to me, I just might fall in love with you all over again.

I tend to belabor the message. When you say you do love me, what does that mean? That emphasis more to convince you than me. What internal conflict machines have ignited inside you? When you reach out for my hand half asleep and then later push it away, how do I spell that?

            Emojis are by far the most fascinating to me. How far we’ve gone in our language, from rock painting to hieroglyphs to alphabet to ASL and back to rock painting but on our phones. We wouldn’t have them if it weren’t for emoticons, their forebears, weird ideogram constructions of the less used letters of the alphabet, remember those?

            Today’s writing prompt is the following four emojis, in no particular order: Red Japanese Demon Mask, Hands Shaping Heart, Spider Web, and Martini Olive.

Jesse Caverly was born an hour outside of Boston but he and his mother quickly became nomads. He doesn't remember much about Tucson and everything about Hawaii. There, he had a small white terrier as a pet. There, he collected comic books and ate guavas fresh off the branch. Then they moved to California, high school was all right, college didn’t happen but life did. He is now a storyteller, proud father of a wilding, and an occasional poet. He resides in Santa Barbara, California. He can be found here.