all my life
wanted to write just
the way
Joni (Mitchell) sings

seesawing
rising unexpected,
write the changing temperament
in the pitch,
of now

yawing, oscillating,
speedy slow,
enunciating the whip of
love crazy

twist to fall into a
double-time
bass baritone insane
from and into a higher pitch,
switch on the
en garde,
blue ink
onto cloth napkin poetry

plain plaintive,
rendering the scene,
rendering my heart,
it's crazy high-lows,
emotion backyard
swing set

Oh Joni!
I could drink a case of you

that is was what I
told the single girls
when I was a wooing man

send me home,
high and crying,
thinking uneven,
creatively,
drinking you,
pounding the dashboard,
sing our palpitating poems

thinking up
the in-between
songs of
till next time

that they loved so much
they begged,
sing it again and again

I drank them all
and think now of poem love songs,
vintages that never caged,
never aging,
those songs I wrote for them,
back in the day
when Joni
taught me how to
see life in verse