8th March 2012

Shall I write in loops and twirls,
Shall I print with not a curl
in any form of letters a, b, y –
or any Greek letters that look like ‘i’,
shall I write with a curve on my t’s, f’s q’s
or might I keep them straight,
the way I choose.
Should I dot my i’s and define my z’s
or is it ‘zed’ –
whatever you please,
for silence is a virtue rarely found
in the encryption of cursive,
in the fine lines of print –
if I write again in curls,
if I kern the font that I just wrote,
if I scratch my letters across a pad,
or type them as I once had
on an old fashioned typewriter with letters
Q W E R T Y
where the P and the A
proved hard to press, &
every day
I must confess,
shifting the paper left to right
so once again I could type,
to the left
to bereft
&
I wrote, but forgot to hold down shift.
I yanked out the paper,
whipped it over,
drew on the back a four-leaf-clover,
once I dipped my pen in its bottle of ink,
I didn’t again have to think,
as I went back to the loops and curls
that lift my head in less than a whirl.
x.