Judge Dreadword

Lyrics

I am a murderer; I wring words by the rough of their necks, I misplace commas and abuse silent W's. I use folk- lift to get from one idea to the next. I stab thoughts at people without first preparing them by word of mouth. I have language in a vice all my own. But today, I appear before the country's chief judge and word prosecutor: Judge Dreadword. Yes I. Confess your atrocious crimes to this Word Court. I am Judge Dreadword - I don't brook silence in my court. You are accused of lynching the word "money" by its second syllable; you violated a full-stop, you stabbed three vowels when they weren't looking. You exploded a bomb in the face of two young phonemes. You copulated with the letters P and Y . . . these acts make me blue with rage, and I'm a hard man. I deal with your kind every day. How do you plead Rude boy Q? Guilty or not guilty? What should I do? Not guilty sir. Take four hundred years. We must rid society of your kind - insensitive word merchants like you must be punished. You have no tradition, no lineage, no big models. Don't write in this court. Take another two hundred years. Rude boy Q have you heard of Johnson, Cavafy, Eliot, Whitman, Lorca, Pasternak, Madelstam? Li Po? No your Dreadness. I thought so; a mere literary shim-sham. Don't cry. This court is a product of a proven tradition of oil and its related cultural benefactors - BP, CIA, IMF, IOU, the UN, PNM - letters that matter in the world. You want to destroy all that? Hush up. I hear you detractors harbour vile thoughts against foreign socio-linguists and visiting psycho-linguists - you draw crude lop-side effigies of Chomsky, you hunt and burn the manifestos of British dialectologists and American politicians. You dare to write letters to the press. Don't interrupt, I heard you were tough, but you snivel in my court. Take another four hundred years. How dare you corrupt our language? Why don't you dot your i's? Don't talk, I do all the talking here. This is my court. Leave me. Court is adjourned. Nail him to the cross of a T.