Oh! On an April Morning,

I'm ready to murder the flowers.
The allnight wordfest, verbal festschrift—
which, notice, I do not hyphenate
because Coleridge warns us against
invented compounds bound by hyphens—
left me in some indeterminate schwa
of sleeplessness, neither long on yawns
nor persnickety and testy,
but stunned, stoned, seemingly
systematically taken apart
by human sounds—verbs, nouns, the little
modifiers, expletives, pronominals,
signs and referents, all, all part of
human grammar (that thing I love)
and "human drama" (that thing I hate)
which kept me listening, listening
for their rhetorical flourishes—
lean in for the sweet sotto voce,
then gradually lean out for the rising
tonal babel, snickers, snorts,
giggles and guffaws, interrogatory,
exclamatory, imperative, imperious,
ablative, declarative, hortatory,
denunciatory, importuning, simpering,
sniveling, wheedling, whining, oh!—
it kept me up all night, allnight long
while the flowers closed their ears
and slept. I'll murder them! I will!

Copyright © 2004 Neil Shepard All rights reserved
from Crab Orchard Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission