Everyone has to find their own way with these,
I suppose,
words of high emotion and enthusiasm,
really the decision to feel
everything or nothing.
The bossiness of Go! Stop!
Beware!
can be life saving
or extraneous,
yellier interventions
that come with the playful
slide and stop
of exclamation points.
Then there are the surprises
of confusion and pain:
Oh! Huh? Oops. Ouch! Bah! and Whoa!,
accomplishments of profanities,
words that explore the spirit
of losing tact, abdicating it,
what they like to tag histrionics,
theatrics, operatics.
We also have expressions of disgust
and contempt: Ugh!
Oh dear. Eww!, near and dear
for the teasingly squeamish to Yuck!
and Gross!, (Boo, Wendy
Testaburger. Boo!),
or the Yiddish Oy Vey.
But happily there are also
the joyful bewilderments of Wow! and Yahoo!
Terrific! and Fabulous!
The coy Gee (and Golly Gee),
love’s tragic Alas! and the spontaneously fond Aah…
The relief of Thank God!
and all the world is okay with OK.
Of course, there are the attention-seeking heys,
throat-clearing ahems,
shh! and psst (which is not used nearly enough).
They can be as quiet as a ladybug
on a knuckle
or as loud as collapse.
Possibly there is fear in stoicism,
which makes petrified
means all of scared and stuck,
stiff and entombed;
you can always choose to be unmoved
and you won’t move,
even at the inconspicuous,
yet nonetheless bewitching,
hi.