All They Do Is Show You’ve Been to College

Punctuation painted upon pines,
a forest of question marks and interrobangs;
semicolons, too.
I want to text my English teacher,
tell her, “If it’s good enough for graffiti,
it’s good enough for me.”

But she suckled
at the teat of Vonnegut,
who tells us that the mark
is a transvestite
hermaphrodite,
as if that’s a bad thing.

Maybe, Kurt,
I’d like to be spooned by
a person in a dress
with half a penis.
Maybe the body comes in
57 varieties,
not just the two that
too many of us see.

Or maybe I’d like to be
in bed with my wife
dreaming of a me
without wrinkles
or folds to get lost in,
instead of here
at this keyboard
trying to decide if or when or
what comes next.

Lincoln said that
for him,
punctuation was
a matter of feeling.
He called the semicolon,
“a useful little chap.”

But I’m no president,
no Vonnegut.
There’s no Indiana boyhood
in my veins
or in the brains
I wrack now
to find an ending
for this thought that began with
a picture of question marks on trees,
with the question that wakes me
each morning
before the sun has its chance;
maybe a log cabin is
what I need.