#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day14 #GLITCHED #PoetryAndTech

                ✧ Dude, where’s my thesaurus? (GLITCHED)

                     Dude, where’s my—

[fatal error: dude.dll missing]
system attempting recovery…

Mind if I drop the d—du—d_
dud
du
—
unbecoming in my verse.vrs.v e r s e
which is all about my scribb|lings
scrbblngs
s c r i b —
[buffer underrun]

My girlhood = filled()
composition.books
kittens_on_covers/corrupt file

Rhyming couplets →
composed to Tess—Te$$a—T3ssa
a pudgy Dalmatian cross
pudgy → pudg→ p_dgy →
{CHUBBYCHUNKYDUMPYFATFLESHYPLUMP}
rotund.tubby.tubby.tub—
[loop detected]

Pencil‑mark smudges
trying to draw round my own thumb
→ annotate() failed
→ handwriting driver obsolete

Writing: beguiling innocent past_time
past.time
past—
because I didn’t yet have the language
to depict horrors
only puppies & ponies & soft‑focus childhood.exe

Christmas 1984
my stocking held THE COLLINS
paperback thesaurus
A‑to‑Z index: fragmented
synonym_universe: expanding…expanding…

I realised pudgy could be:
chubby chunky dumpy fat fleshy plump rolypoly rotund tubby
vocabulary expansion pack installed
permissions: unrestricted

A gift of words
like a gun & ammunition
(ammunition flagged: unsafe metaphor)

My teens: darker verses surfaced
canonical / cannonical / can(n)on‑ical
Songs of Innocence
Songs of Experi—Exper—
[application crashed]

Thank you Blake
for the split‑screen worldview
that dogs my heels
divides my universe
teaches me to nod
“…that’s Experience speaking”
[voiceprint mismatch]

Lady Lazarus enters
creativity + madness =
frequent bedfellows
(bedfellows.dll unstable)

The trick: reign in the mania
keep the cauldron bubbling
but not overflowing
not drowning significant others
in sticky cerebral porridge
[warning: metaphor viscosity high]

Ted Hughes somewhere saying
she “relied on Thesaurus
to push her through poem after poem”
Oh Sylvia—
better faith in a book of words
than in a man
relationship_module: corrupted

“One day I’ll have my death of him”
prophecy.log archived
checksum: intact

So 6 years, 16 years, where am I now
my verse, my art
21st‑century gal
still with my Collins
spine broken / user broken / both operational

Pencil + fountain pen packed away
verse no longer scribbled
I text on an iPhone
in stolen downtime
modern_technology.wonders
no one guessing
I’m pouring out my soul
in free verse over latte

Thesaurus now online
infinite scroll
invisible index
to the untrained eye
I’m merely sending a text
not pushing poem after poem
and Hughes can’t point and say
“Dude, where’s her Thesaurus”
→ because it’s everywhere
→ because it’s nowhere
→ because it’s inside the glitch now