A POEM OF NOTE
(OR NONSENSE)

So what if I jot down my happiness
in simple descriptions, never bizarre.

This time we’re dealing with bugs.
Yes, you heard right.
There are bugs in that car,
that jet-black, brand-new,
electronic, platonic love affair,
that ultra modern, admired by all,
that super-fantastic miracle car.

Bugs!

They could wrench your soul.
They did mine.

I could drop, as it stands, all rhythm and rhyme,
jump rope with each line —
you all get it, I hope, electrical line —

Don’t fret. I could write that poem of note
if only I wasn’t so shy and remote.

But one day I may,
simply because,
and this sounds absurd,
but I do act out thoroughly each single word,
bugs and all,
I even jump rope while I write without pause
in what you might call

a most amusing, instant, ambitious,
word-crackling delicious,
literally literary dream-recall
in which I try out, and clearly recall
this poem’s different variations
of which I like this one best of all.

8/8/1986

Ute Kaboolian