Impetus for this poem was kind of a child's game
in which you're supposed to get your friend
to say the word without saying it yourself.
And I guess the word for that is a nay word.
Even though I don't-- when I grew up I don't think that was
the word for it, who knows what the word was,
if there was such a thing.
"Riddle on a Nay-Word"
"Keep it.
Zip it.
Don't utter a word.
Not sure to what's referred.
This equation doesn't sum.
All jumbo mumbo.
Chance and choke.
The words, a code word, chum.
Sing it as a butcher bird might hum
or the stumbling mumbler who leaves the joke half heard,
half ha, ha, half umm, or the mummer from the dumb show,
quite dumb, in a word, absurd.
Or your mother, mummy, you're her third, singing, sugar,
sugar, sugar plum, a forward and an after, one crossword
in the works means gum between this catch and key,
you a blurred whirly bird and numb.
Perhaps though, the thoughts occurred, the word is mum,
mum's the word."