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Title:       Hotel
Date:        2025-04-10
Link:        https://spool-five.com/poetry/2025_apr10_hotel/
Word Count:  254
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> Now for our daily prompt (optional, as always). Yesterday, we looked
> at a poem that used sound in a very particular way, to create a slow
> and mysterious feeling. Mark Bibbins’ poem, “At the End of the Endless
> Decade,” uses sound very differently, with less eerieness and more
> wordplay. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that, like
> Bibbins’, uses alliteration and punning. See if you can’t work in
> references to at least one word you have trouble spelling, and one that
> you’ve never quite been able to perfectly remember the meaning of.


Thick, hotel-room robe
TV blaring
flicking through channels
Searching for something in English
The sounds of foreign words somehow soothing
nonetheless
Voices that comfort after long flight

A strange theory about microbes
I met someone at a philosophy conference once
Who suggested that we are tired after a plane flight
In spite of not moving or exerting physical force
Due to the work our microbes were doing
To fight off the microbes of other passengers

I smiled and nodded, not quite sure
What a microbe was
I had a vague idea
It was a living thing
That I couldn't see
It had a job to do
And at the end of the day
Would take a bath And wear a robe

Invisible sliding things
or floating, or warring
or dividing, or performing
alchemy, converting matter into energy
or transporting
or signalling
or speaking in foreign tongues
Through a tinny, cheap TV speaker.