DUI

He drove his little
car
all over my
words
over the verbs as they screamed
at him
across the
metaphors as they
complained how it
hurt
into the
paragraphs
so indignant at his
brashness
He swerved to miss
the syllable with the
sharp edge
only to
slip the wide contraction taking
its
apostrophe and
dropping it along the
margin to roll
into the pathway
of the proper
noun. Then pronunciation
stopped him
and he
surrendered admitting
he had had
his way
with words and
accepted his sentence.

March 22, 2001