I’m trying to break
my bad habit 
of depriving myself
of thick words.

I’m going instead to savor
yucca, saltimbanque,
muscadine, and
riprap. Lie back with mouthfuls:

jingoistic, marbling,
dysplasia, nave, 
sacristy, homunculus,
mellifluous, melisma.

As much as I love
the stark bite of small
and simple, there are times
when I want the rich silk

of long syllables and 
sibilance, diphthongs
flitting across my tongue;
a lateborn taste for complexity

turning my scorn
for haute linguistic plating
of easy thought on its head.
I shall fatten myself

on these words
until I loll back
sated, full with them,
into a new round slumber.

And when I wake? 
I cannot yet know the spells
to come from this, the soothing
afterglow of such gorging,

the possible combinations,
sounds, denotations,
connotations;
an entirely different man 

may rise from the bed
where I laid myself:
hungry for synecdoche,
new as an egg, humbled

by potential, awake to language
as if it was again
that first time being turned away
from mother’s breast

and introduced to 
soft, utterly
unknown nourishment,
and finding it good.