Dear Mrs. Doster,

a few decades ago
you frowned in class
and promised we would appreciate
each and every rule of grammar
i’ll admit it
its nice being able to write a want ad
or a syntactically upright letter
asking for money
all perfectly parsed
in choice and proper english
so smart and effective, mrs. doster

but, mrs. doster,
I’ve been conjugating
a lot these past few decades
and now it seems
that run-on sentences fit
a run-on life
there is a free flowing
grammar to the onrush
when everything causes anything
spilling over itself
perfectly
parsed

upper case should be optional
recreational
semicolons sense-ational
subjunctive reflexive
commas separating,
containing

mrs. Doster
if I may be so bold
you should sip some scotch
kiss yourself on the wrist
kiss a romantic on the lips
read Rumi

then we could talk
about grammar

then, mrs. Doster, we could just talk



by the boy poets sipping scotch in school