Tilde Confession
My confessions are all in tildes
like dead keys on mechanical typewriters
ink splattered, shuttering, a film reel
repeating the last scene, credits forestalled;
there’s so much to a dash, when dash is read,
when doubles count espressos in patisseries
and conquest bagels bristle with salmon —
wild caught (of course), like Vegas striplings wearing
summer shorts, these cotton hose are not so curt
as bent nosed kings bedding mistresses and wards:
these banks are insoluble, problems unfungible,
caught somewhere between Peking and Beijing
or Burma and Myanmar — I feel a Ceylon breeze
wisping through these East Indies, like Kipling
clearing out his pipe, getting ready for a Kafir expedition,
for Cockney privateers sweltering in the inland heat,
fifty years too soon for freight cars, but near enough
for diphtheria, and Victoria, and all that.
