Some Thoughts on Word Play and Some of My Quotes That Include Them,

Artist, actor, poet, teacher, songwriter & actor with 4,000 poems & almost 1,000 songs written, performed recorded & published on line.

Oh, Pen open my mind with the opium of inspiration, let me righteously write on in such a way that makes readers all say...."Right on!!"

There are so many ways to say something fun or wonderful with just words.

I have always enjoyed word play

when I write songs or poetry.

It can make your work

more humorous to all.

I will put all of my most popular

word plays that I have created

in italics in this article

For example- When I was

doing a poetry reading

at a local cafe I realized:

"that half the patrons

were not there for poetry

it was just noise as they

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perused their phones

or looked for something better

catalogued in their P.C.

as they sucked down crappacinos

or sipped latte-fucking-daS

I also had quite a lot of reactions from

the liberal side of my readers

when I simply added an apostrophe

to the name of the more conservative

party that was known for getting

very little done except squabbling

and so I renamed that party:

" R E P U B L I C A N ' T . "

I went on to sell a whole lot of bumper

stickers to folks who loved this

concise and quite accurate one word

statement.

Some word play involves

giving a specific word a whole

new Image that makes it more

than just an emotion and turning it

into a visaual that is easier for

many to understand as I did

with the word belief::

God is the creator

of beliefs. He covers

the world with vast forests

filled with endless

stems of thoughts

branching out to

benefit others

then he helps us harvests

beliefs into realities

where all that we

believe in can bear

fruit holding the

sweetest nectars

ever suckled..

I took the word hope that two who are

in love shared and turned it into

a journey over crooked roads, ravines

and even an avalanche which made

hope a form of lanscaped traversed

as demonstrated below:

We walked that

crooked road of hope,

inching past ravines

each with deadly slopes,

balanced only by love,

our rope against the fall,

down mountains of bills

in an avalanche,

or strolling cool, green valleys

when we had Carte Blanche

but what mattered the most

is that with you I had it all..

In another work that I called :

Monday Morning Blues:

I used word play to twist

the word nothing in another direction

simply by reversing one line into

another line that took on a

whole new meaning as written below:

Lately I've been skipping dinner

there's no candlelit romance

loneliess has left me thinner,

tightening belts on baggy pants.

If I waste away to nothing

then there's nothing left to waste,

alcohol's my anesthesia

to love's pain I must erase.

It makes for a powerful hook.

In a poem that I wrote about Woodstock

I used common substances to give

a word like love more flavor and I gave

the word inhibitions a burial place with

just a bit of word play:

Spread love like mayonnaise,
and damn the calories,
it moistens the dry bland
of our planet in peril.

Leap over the graves
of your inhibitions,
dust off an old cause
and make it purposeful again.

Set your forsaken dreams free
in a world that might once again
be held captivated.

Playing with words comes in many forms

and they all have much more technical names

like personification and Homophones

but I am trying to keep my explanations

of word play simple for the layman and woman.

Playing with words also involves using

unusual descriptions to avoid the ways

a woman is described in tedious cliches

such as: she was as lovely as a rose.

One has to think bigger and create an image

in the readers minds that allows them

to see her beauty in new ways:

She was built like
the Taj Mahal
with a whole lot up top
and two ivory columns
to support it all.

She came on to me like
one of those burrs
stiuck on your trousers
that you can't get off...

Sometimes you simply have to add

a few colors to your words to give them

a much stronger impact on the reader

such as this excerpt from one on my songs:

Black Coffee,
Blue morning,
Bathed in pale yellow light,
with just this armchair to hold me
my sugar's gone on a flight
over clouds of soft white...

It is also fun to use a season and

the way it plays out yearly to describe

the fall of a brief love that you cherished:

Till Autumn with
her tawdry laugh
and her multi-colored dress,
put spices in each kiss we shared
I swear she tasted best.

She blows across my limbs
stripping me bare.... we tumble down
she rakes her nails across my back
leaving me there ....spellbound....

One of my most favorite hooks in all

of my songs is a play on an old phrase

with an addition that worked very well:

Morning has broken
so why the hell fix it,
it matches my heart
since you left me behind,
let it bleed through my window,
in a bright, yellow puddle,
let it break hard forever
through the slats of my blinds,
why the hell should I fix it
when it's been so unkind.
so unkind

You must allow your mind as you write

to go beyond the common ways of describing

human emotion with a word such as morning

and give it damage that is not worth repairing.

Even describing my guitar demands that I

make it more human in other reader's eyes

so that they can understand my passion for

what it gives me musically:

This guitar’s endured

angry fingers and thumbs

plucking pain from its frets,

till my digits were numb,

with its dark sound hole screaming,

as my vocals fell mum,

something far more redeeming,

then I’d ever begun,

things my heart should be dreaming

on lonely nights yet to come.

If you are writing about tough love and

or a really tough woman you can have fun

with it and leave your audience delighted:

She's got kick starters on her vibrators,
and she dresses in leather and chains,
she bench presses two hundred pounds
but she never breaks sweat stains,
she's hard as nails but then again
she's pretty as can be,
And I know that her tough love's gonna
make a good man out of me.....

I think I have covered word play as well as

more on the topic of descriptive writing

in this part two of a series I am creating.

which was all done by simply using

words in a unique way. I will close with

an excerpt from a piece I wrote on jazz

that reads as follows:

it's contagious when your Jazzy
but you're feeling no pain
it's a June kiss from Jenny
that sweet girl... next door
it's a chance to get Jiggy with it
so get your ass on the floor
Jazz is safe sax...it's hot brass
no bullets included
it's six trumpets blown full blast
and it's 8 trombones muted
it's a Jaywalk to heaven
or it's Jezebel's smile
we'll be swinging till midnight
stick around for awhile.

Please feel free to critique my efforts

or leave comments and suggestion.

"Comments are like music to our peers."

is one of my personally written, favorite quote.

Thanks for reading this far and I hope you

enjoyed my playtime with words.

© 2022 Matthew Frederick Blowers III