Ironmongery

Ironmongery proves that every word was once a poem.
Ironmongery indicts every word for laziness.
Ironmongery can be anything it wants to.
Ironmongery was discovered in 1711*.
Some words are braver than others. Ironmongery is the bravest of all. When ancient armies faced each other they waved swords, axes and other soon to be red-wet instruments and shouted “ironmongery! ironmongery!” before throwing themselves into battle. There are other beautiful words but ironmongery has the magical ability to drill itself into a sentence or lyric like Excalibur in the stone. The rightful king was the only man who could draw Excalibur from the stone. The poet is the person who can draw ironmongery from the dictionary. The magic of poetry. Fire-breathing words.

Ironmongery means 1. a hardware store or business. 2. the stock of a hardware store; hardware. A poem is a hardware store. Pull poems from a forge. Hammer them against an anvil. That must be how the word ironmongery was first written. I’m positive of it!

Let’s do a chemistry experiment. Take the opening three sentences and replace them with another word, any word. I’ll use shoehorn.
Shoehorn proves that every word was once a poem.
Shoehorn indicts every word for laziness.
Shoehorn can be anything it wants to.
Poetry.

* The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, pp. 1484