Actually


I don’t like the word.

Actually,
I hate how actually 
has crept into all our conversations:

actually, he’s in a meeting

actually, I meant to call you

she actually said that?

Actually? 
As opposed to what other reality?

Actually, the word has lost all 
its corrective capabilities.

Actually, I can no longer distinguish
it from other conversation fillers:

er…um...ah…well…ya know…actually, 
I don’t love you anymore. 






Poetic Language


I doubt that I will ever see
a fragile word like filigree
ever look so much at home
as it does tucked in a poem.

Another word that feels just right
in a poem, say, about fading light,
if my vocabulary’s feeling muscular
the sky, I’d write, looks quite crepuscular.

And when some verse you’d like to rhyme
describing subtle changes over time
should one line end with west or best
close the next with palimpsest.

Next time you see one of these three,
palimpsest, crepuscular, or filigree,
the odds are nine times out of ten
a poem will be the where and when.






Casablanca Colorized


Allons enfants de la patria ...

On the Turner Movie Channel
French patriots are singing La Marseillaise again
drowning out the Nazis 
in Monsieur Rick’s Café Americain

as I, for some reason, am remembering
the thrill of opening new boxes of Crayolas.

Eight, sixteen, then thirty-two,
and finally sixty-four! 
An explosion of color.
But still, I stayed within the lines,

could never find the proper color 
for defiance like theirs.