Oh! on an April morning
I’m ready to murder the flowers. 
The all-night word-fest left me
in some indeterminate schwa 
of sleeplessness, neither long on yawns 
nor persnickety and testy, 
but stunned, stoned, seemingly 
systematically taken apart 
by human sounds—verbs, nouns, the little 
modifiers, expletives, pronominals, 
signs and referents, all, all part of 
human grammar (that thing I love) 
and “human drama” (that thing I hate) 
which kept me listening, listening 
for their rhetorical flourishes— 
lean in for the sweet sotto voce,
then gradually lean out for the rising 
tonal babel, snickers, snorts, 
giggles and guffaws, interrogatory, 
exclamatory, imperative, imperious, 
ablative, declarative, hortatory, 
denunciatory, importuning, simpering, 
sniveling, wheedling, whining, oh!— 
it kept me up all night, all night long 
while the flowers closed their ears 
and slept. I’ll murder them! I will!