jangled
we declare you unfit
hovering away your existence
I knew I had seen you in a cloud
in my shadow
umbrella-ing my dog
the reason he chases himself around the yard
that’ll teach you
that’ll show you to be high and mighty
you are the abomination of the mustache
the Picasso of punctuation
the New Formalist of accentuation
you are where the line turns fowl
O, tilde
you no longer reign over our
parade
in your wavy contempt
you no longer shroud the Spanish—
N
we have excommunicated you henceforth
you are the lowest of lows
accent the blue spitfire of Hades, thou
foul mite!
slosh and vessel the dribble of idiots
you fiend!
away from here you diacritical demon!
OUT we say!
and OUT! again!
you have inflected your last piñata
played your final Niño out
you are not the Portuguese or Estonian nasal
close-mid back rounded vowel
you are not the Vietnamese creaky voice
you are the bastard graph of an ocean wave
the rotten rollicking of earthquaked carpet
the lewd lapping of the termagant tongue
if we could put you to work you would shovel
our earth for all eternity
your hills would contain Sisyphus and his twin
forever ambling up and back on your foul spine
we are infinitely kind in our charge
swagger away past the furthest walls
your humps ho-humming infinitely further
turn never back, thou palendromian polyp
yes, we are banning you beyond the nasal G
infinitely beyond the contemplation of the variant A
superscript no more
sink for all we care
become, if you must
a cuttlefish
a flat-faced flounder’s wiggling brow
