unfair

.

my thoughts are over used

rutted and butted and puttered over

endlessly

mulling and churning and chewing over

ceaselessly

all details and entrails assailed over

and over and over thinking thinking

drinking and drowning down in

mess of haze-maze crazed

worry-boned alone-ness

.

it’s fair to say

my thoughts are worn-to-thin

fair-to-middling — overmused

knocking the stuffings of my noggin-chocking nights

no respite in sight; unlit — confused

.

whirl pooled in a floating world

misted twisted pensées swirl and curl

miserly, relentless, restless, gutted

i rise from sleep to sleep perchance but

just to think again again again again

my wearied brain is drained thus

in vain though

i own it

i know it

i think

i think

i think

therefore i am?

here? there? no? where?

it’s fair to say

.

overmused : worn out form thinking too much

.

today’s challenge is to write a poem based on a word featured in a tweet from Haggard Hawks, an account devoted to obscure and interesting English words. Will you choose a word like “aprosexia,” which means “an inability to concentrate”? Or maybe something like “greenout,” which is “the relief a person who has worked or lived in a snowy area for a long time feels on seeing something fresh and green for the first time”? 

I chose, of course, without overthinking the possibilities, overmused

WORD OF THE YEAR 2021: overmused 33%

(adj.) worn out from thinking too much

​

It’s fair to say we probably all had a lot on our minds in 2021, which makes this superb seventeenth-century coinage the perfect choice for Word of the Year. To overmuse is to overthink, or to contemplate too much—so if you’re feeling overmused, then you’re utterly exhausted from endlessly thinking, worrying, and mulling things over.

​https://www.haggardhawks.com/woty

.

not a haiku

btw