in the margins of those third grade notebooks
that were brindled like the maddest cows.
Next came the letter M, standing for Me, for my name,
always drawn rearing up, in 3-D, so I could show
what I had learned about shadows falling
across the letter itself.
High school was all about dollar signs,
even in those blue exam notebooks, a way
for me to say without saying the words
of those days, which were all - I want,
I want, I want.
And now that I'm the man and the kind of man
that has a lot of meetings, and my notebook
is just so - leatherbound, with a pocket for my cards
and the perfect holster for my pen, I can't draw
anything, since it's laid out on the table for all to see,
so I use the bad handwriting I learned in second grade
to hide the words I write which are -
what the hell are these people talking about today?
Mark Aiello
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