POEM

Some days are like

bringing rabbits out of a hat.

Some days one must

hide one’s light

in a barrel. Some days

one’s heart doesn’t want

to to stay where it belongs—

it keeps going

flippity-flop flippity-flop.

Some days there are

unexpected pleasures

that leave you in a kind of

impressive pause

that lasts long enough

so that any random sound

will make you jump as if

gazing upon the nucleus

of the neurotic.

Yes, unexpected...

like over-hearing

someone say, “art gives me

the willies” or like tonight,

while flipping, or flopping,

through the Complete Poems
1913-1962 of E.E. Cummings

that I had recently obtained

from an antique store,

I discovered a pressed

marijuana leaf on page 776,

covering a poem titled SONG

where lines from the poem

such as “precisely ours /

is the now to grow” & “our summer

in fall / and in winter our spring /

is the yes of yes” befits my

inflamed discovery just as

“strolling slowly(mind in mind) /

through some green

mysterious land” caressed

the underside of the leaf

on the very opposite page.

& then I grew anxious for

more discoveries

so I flipped through the

thick book where I was

thinking that perhaps

I’d find money? a tiny birdie

with golden wings? & suddenly

on page 383

I made another discovery:

a four-leaf clover

that had perhaps been aching

to be seen again after thirty years

like a corpse that longs to be seen

in a wax museum.

ACCENTS

My thoughts are often thrown

through mill-wheels,

treading like

a secondary accent,

like one’s wisdom teeth

never cutting through.

The way that certain people

breathe, it’s like

they are telling fibs

through their ribs.

What could alter a voice

when one

“has a strong foreign

or regional accent . . .

the individual with the

less obvious accent

will naturally try

to mimic the stronger one”?

Was it the Toronto-native’s

eerie drawl that I mimicked,

or was it because

I sounded like

James Mason’s accent

in Lolita 

when he attempted

to delicately illustrate

his “mature depth”?

I speak in minimal scruples

when I am anxious,

like peppermints

melting on my tongue;

pearly taste where

taste-buds dance

as if at a polka party.

What of the accents

of eyes? Mental glottis, like

sweet scents of gardens.

A Beauty that is out-of-place

“like discovering a prim rose in a swamp.”

What of the accent of change?

the way that I spun around like

a frightened lamb this evening

as the dishes shifted like

the grounds underneath

a nuclear plant

after a major earthquake.

Should murderers be dipped

into radioactive lakes?

This poem may be about

accents, but it may not be.

This poem could be about

scaling up a wall

towards a window

(if I were that tiny)

where a fly buzzes around,

sounding like a dozen ‘copters.

The fly lands on the window,

cleans its antennas,

its legs moving as fast

as hummingbirds’ wings,

producing winds

that nearly throws me

off of the window sill.

However, I scale further

to get a closer look

at the phenomenon;

the fly’s multi-colored eyes

glistening off of my face

like a prism.

Has every accent been betrayed?

Perhaps Yogi Berra would take it

a step further, saying,

“It ain’t over ‘til you’re buried underground.”

Perhaps with a tooth

-y smile, like

a cobblestone road?

Accent of disappearing

from your body:

new verbiage for your

eternal destiny, passing

through, becoming

a “rookie” in the

Vast Unlimited shape

of it all, where

we are mere fibrils

in the

Universe’s body.