Another Day in the Dictionary

Another Day in the Dictionary
by Phil Ginsburg
A fight is about to break out between pages 102 and 103
In my dictionary
Ballistic is hurling insults across the binding at balsamic
“Look at you, you’re a wimp of a word…eh?
What do you do?  Eh? You hang out with red lettuce,
you’ve got friends with names like radicchio, chard and arugula.”
It’s to be mentioned that none of the other words on page 102 want to see violence
Ballad, balloon and ballerina are trying to reason with ballistic
Ballot wants to take a poll of the page to see who’s in favor of conflict
But ballistic will have none of it:
“What am I doing on the same page with you jellyfish?” he says.
“Who are you calling a jellyfish?” comes a voice from page 804
It’s the voice of jellyfish.
Now this altercation is in danger of spreading
Over a span of 700 pages–you don’t want to get the J’s involved, they’ve got
Javelin, jugular, and judgement, not to mention Jehovah.
Meanwhile, balsamic has a broken a 12-year old bottle of it’s  Trebbiano and Lambrusco Syrup and is threatening ballistic with knife like movements
Ballistic is armed with a projectile missile that, if fired,
Could do damage far beyond page 103
The fall out could reach as far Mariachi and marinara.
Back on page 103, banana, balmy, and baloney are doing their best
To restrain balsamic
Thank God for ballyhoo, who is succeeding in disarming everyone
With it’s self-deprecating humor
“What is all the ballyhoo here?”
“Hey, you with the missile, are you going ballistic?”
Even ballistic can’t keep a straight face.
‘Ban’ now gets up and reminds everyone that there’s  a treaty between pages 102-103
And that words have power and that sentences of mass construction could wipe out
our entire lexicon
He reminds everyone that they are dictionary words
And how each one has its own definition and dignity of space
That they aren’t living under a thesaurus tyranny like hundreds and hundreds of their Fellow words who everyday inhabit unspeakable, cramped, unalphabetized paragraphs Arranged into alien categories
And forced to have abstract relations with indeterminate numbers.
At this point, ‘banal’ is yelling, “here, here!”
Nobody on either page even pays attention.
Now something unpredictable is happening: all the words on pages 102-103 join together in the binding–even balk, who never wants to do anything
Bake is giving out cookies
Balderdash is telling jokes
Bald is showing off a new hair piece
Everyone agrees that the battle is not with each other but with a world that now prefers Visuals more than them:
Let us not forget that  “in the beginning was the Word”; everyone looks encouraged.
And from the balcony
Baguette, grasping the sticky hands of baklava, yells an ‘amen’ so loud
That even zigzag and zither
Wake up from their sleep
And fall out of their beds.