Little Kids Who Pray

Little Kids
Who Pray

---

My word phenylene,
it might soundly seem,
doth rhyme with title college dean ...
and mayhap e'en morpheme.
                                             ---barbsdad
---

Commonly termed
Sardinians
are the people who live
on the island of Sardinia
off the western

coast
of
Italy.

I, on the other hand,

call
them
Sardines.

And when they gain water,
they swim like fish
of the sewery sea.

And those Sardinians
who live in a trailer
I count as

Sardines in a can.

According to Answers.com,
Philippians

(also a book
of the Bible)

refers to the people of
Philippi

(and Philippi's presumably
the plural of, ought
I say it? Philippus):

"Philippi was the site of
the decisive battle
in which the forces of
Octavian
(later Augustus Caesar)
and Mark Antony defeated
the army of Brutus
and Cassius."

I prefer to call them,
of course (and it's
too obvious for words),

the
Philippines.

And Indians,
those teeming neighbors
of Pakistan and Bangladesh
and China---

and Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar,
and even Sri Lanka?

I
prefer,
for them,
Indines.

Those smileless waiting-room
prospects for cosmetic
dentistry?

Not patients, no;
I call them Dentines.

And greenhorn street gangs?
Gangrenes.

Talkative youngsters?
Gabardines.

Infant Mauries
I tag as Maureens.

People who love girls
named Phyllis?

Philistines!

Guests at a ball?
A stretch: ball peens.

Two salad greens
make a peregrines.

Unless.

Unless they've lost
their coloration---
in which case they're
a peregrines
that've lost their colors.

Somehow.

I do know
for a fact

that
some
folks

residing in southeast
Wisconsin are Racines.

And then, to range
a bit farther afield,
there exist pralines---

those
hungry
little

kids

who
fervent
pray.