I wrote Sixing and Sevening in response to the W3 Poetry Prompt #131. Where Melissa Lemay is the talented Poet of the Week (Read her winning poem here). Her challenge is to write a poem creating verbs from a list of words. Click below for the full details and guidelines.
Click here to read the prompt guidelines and word list
Melissa’s prompt guidelines
Verb: a word used to describe an action, state, or occurrence, and forming the main part of the predicate of a sentence, such as hear, become, happen.
Prompt
The autumn wind leaf-flooded the road.
Write a poem in any form, no more than 40 lines;
Take a handful (5) of the words in the table below and use them in your poem as verbs;
Examples:
Table of words
| about | herself | peace |
| because | high | possible |
| camera | how | science |
| car | industry | seven |
| dark | itself | six |
| despite | late | south |
| entire | machine | speech |
| foot | money | toward |
| former | nice | two |
| heart | other | yes |
Sixing and Sevening
It came out,
Around—abouting
From nowhere,
Despiting
Not knowing
And
Without a care,
Speeching
Sense
It reached
Sixing and sevening!
And teached
Us
Whence,
In the early morn—
Something strange
And new
Was born.
Lesley Scoble, November 2024
NOTES
Sixing as a verb means you are taking a risk in a state of disorder.
Sevening means you are taking a risk in an extreme state of disorder.
Syntax: derivatives and verbal form of the numerals sixes and sevens.
Past tense: sixed and sevened.
*I made these verbs up from the numerals sixes and sevens.🙃
I am all at sixes and sevens!
The saying is 500 years old! It originates from a 14th century dice game called Hazard, where rolling a six or a seven was risky.
The writer, Geoffrey Chaucer, mentions a similar phrase in Troilus and Criseyde (1374).
Some believe the phrase also comes from an annual award dispute between two medieval Livery Companies of London.
To avoid conflict over precedence, the Merchant Taylors and the Skinners Livery Companies, London, agreed to alternate 6th and 7th place each year.
The current meaning for the phrase “at sixes and sevens” is “in a state of confusion and disorder.”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My thanks to our most gracious host, David, The Skeptics Kaddish.
Special thanks to Melissa, for the inspirational verbal prompt!
And above all, thank you, dear reader, for popping by. 🙏
Lesley lives in the City of London Square Mile. An artist, actor and sculptor (her first ceramic sculpture won the V&A inspired by… Award). Scenic artist & book illustrator, playwright (her musical play, Rapscallion performed in inner city schools and theatre school); TV dancer; mime artist; Animator and illustrator for TV production. Set up Pinecone Studios Ltd and IIMSI Ltd drama and filmmaking workshops in London – producing award-winning films made by children.
LesleyScoble.com 
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