We quarreled over the distinction of miracle and wonder
You the latinate indicated the subjective tumult of the former
Against the more general curiosity denoted in the latter
And while I was inclined to concur as to the import of the flatter one
I held to the supernatural force of the sharper
And objected loudly to these spurious proofs
Of the existence of God
Well not quarreled exactly disputed maybe
Or disagreed mildly
Or agreed to disagree
But at that point we’ve lapsed into complete prune danish
And really my beef was not with you
But with morons who claim for miracles
Some epistemic significance
And unexplained equals paranormal
And who worse credit God with the achievements
Of scientists technologists and medical practitioners
And similarly people who claim to have risen from the dead
Are mistaken at best
And being declared something is not the same
As being something

I had a dashboard once that was split in three or more places
Early in the history of the padded dash
It lived in a frankenstein car an AMC product mostly
Compounded with elements of Datsun and Ford
With power brakes that I wasn’t used to
And which may in fact have been defectively powerful
And my passenger was browbeating me
In a habitual reenactment
About some alleged deficiency of mine that I cared nothing about
And the pavement was slick in the drizzle
And I smacked into a stationary vehicle that was turning left
And my former passenger tried to butt in
And tell the cop that the stopped car
Didn’t have its turn signal on
A claim for which I could not vouch
Whereupon the cop speculated that I looked familiar
People are always telling me I look like somebody
And he was going to run my license and check for outstanding warrants
That was a really shitty car

So words and things who knows
Who knows
What poet says we must read aright
Though no preceptor scolds us when we stray
A particular challenge for dumb Americans
Like me raised on Sugar Smacks baloney
The meat I mean
Though the rhetorical usage of the term might also be relevant
And the philosophy of Martindale
And if you can’t say something nice
You should have your brains splattered
On the back wall in the fetid peewhiff parking deck
The world is so full of a number of things
I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings
I wish I could write like a gay man
Or a handsome young fellow with tuberculosis
Or a girl aged in the single digits confiding to her diary
But every moment and there are lots of them behind me
Is a fork in the road
Do you want to see the slides
Of my vacation in Majorca
Or shall we wrangle over some other trivial matter