95: Broil

Slops … where are slops? What even is ‘slops’? Slops isn’t a mixture in any sense, it is its own thing. Swill is different yet gets confused with slops, though if they were side by side you would know which was which. We have a certain knack for knowing this kind of thing that comes with the terrain, that’s handed to us as if with a silent nod from language, the custodian of this particular swill bucket. But slops isn’t a refined or a gloopier form of swill. Swill is a muckier liquid with solids floating in it and slops should never be inferred from a literal reading of swill. Anyway, on to the outline. Plan B is slops, Plan A should have been slops, but slush was the slops of its time. Originally plan A was stang, but broil was the stang of its time, and the broil market was so saturated with festering stange, that slush became Plan A and slops the … well slops became slops. Soon for the slodge. Plan C. Unlike swill and slops, slodge cannot be strained, skimmed or reduced. The conceptual distinction between slodge and sludge should be borne in mind throughout this programme, as should that between slodge and stodge. While being syntagmatically proximal, slodge, stodge and sludge (as well as the lesser-used studge) are, paradigmatically speaking, on immensely divergent terrain, and thus normally only find themselves in the mouth of the poet after three dry courses of the Sunday food supplements have been dispatched, page by page. Plan C calls for a slodge pot, installed beneath the writing desk and a short toe-flick away from the poet’s strongest slipper, such that the studged-up pages may be spat into the pot’s slodge to form a swill of increasing magnitude, and relevance to the field, the terrain.