11.19.2020

for love he wanted to break all the rules

In love, his grammar grew 
rich with intensifiers, and adverbs fell 
madly from the sky like pheasants 
for the peasantry, and he, as sated 
as they were, lolled under shade trees 
until roused by moonlight 
and the beautiful fraternal twins 
and and but. Oh that was when 
he knew he couldn’t resist 
a conjunction of any kind. 
One said accumulate, the other 
was a doubter who loved the wind 
and the mind that cleans up after it. 
                                     For love 
he wanted to break all the rules, 
light a candle behind a sentence 
named Sheila, always running on 
and wishing to be stopped 
by the hard button of a period. 
Sometimes, in desperation, he’d look 
toward a mannequin or a window dresser 
with a penchant for parsing. 
But mostly he wanted you, Sheila, 
and the adjectives that could precede 
and change you: bluesy, fly-by-night, 
queen of all that is and might be. 

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