The Spoonbill Generator

The dictionary was far from green

Though lacking "serpentine" to "spleen"

Though lacking "fish" to "magazine"

And duplicating "stoat"

This thinnish book was little use

It held no synonym for "goose"

And glossed "extravagant" as "puce"

And "hymnody" as "throat"

The supplements were just as good

With "turpentine" and "sandalwood"

As pseudonyms of "Robin Hood"

And "Hildebrand" of "goat"

Yet, bound inside its crimson spine

Worth more than any diamond mine

It blazon'd forth the deathless line:

"Please ignore this note"

The likes of Chaucer, Milton, Keats

Or anyone who oft repeats

(the product of too many beets)

Such words as "asymptote"

Had owned this volume, turn by turn

The prolix and the taciturn

The sapient and the slow-to-learn

Resiting "words" by "wrote"

And so it was that, later

As the tailor milled his gaiter

And looked up words for " waiter"

That we foundered in the moat

A dictionary as cause of death

A pillow-book that stifles breath

Withholder of the shiboleth

That casts the world afloat.

Contributors:	PeterWRC, P, Roland, Mick, TG, Bop.
Poem finished:	19th January 1997.