Decapitating Phillip

 Decapitating Phillip
 
 I almost used the word “vicissitude”
 almost correctly the other day.
 Which I guess doesn’t mean much,
 but gave me a sense of the possible
 that I don’t usually get.
 For all the language I’ve absorbed,
 I can probably trace most of it
 back to high school. Like,

 I always reach for the screwdriver
 even though this is a great place
 to use the 12” sprocket
 with the angled head
 and motorized mounting unit.
 
 (I like that I stole “sprocket”
 from Steve Martin,
 so I don’t want to look it up
 and find out what (if) it actually means.
 If I do that, I might forget it altogether.)
 
 When I thought to use “vicissitude,”
 I then thought, “That’s not a word,
 is it?” It is, just not the one I needed.
 That one, I didn’t find. So I used the screwdriver.