it’s too wet, too gloomy, too damp
putting me in a bad mood,
I am too annoyed to write
I wanted to picnic today
this storm has ruined everything!
Dang it! Now the lights have gone out!
Even if I could write, I can’t.
The computer won’t work!
This lament is from Linwood, the "wanna be" writer.
Chet, the real writer, heard the lament of his roommate.
as he was scribbling his thoughts onto a paper plate
using the light from the window
noting impressions in a line
angry gray clouds
thunder’s cymbal crash
resolve of the black oak tree to stand up to the storm
“I will write tomorrow!” yelled Linwood. “I am going back to bed now.”
Chet kept writing….you see,
this weather won’t poison a poets pen
because a real writer can write about….
an electrical outlet
a surprisingly fast mouse
a drop of glue
a tiny piece of tape
a teensy crumb from a pink eraser
or their roommates
that is what writers and poets do.
Silence is not the finale of the conversation,
glowworm is bush lux,
chicken is not made of egg,
the desire comes from the vision
at least for the male...
Horny always comes from the word,
not always from the body.
Theo cat is a tame feline
dog is homegrown wolf...
Passion can kill lives,
the pig's nose is electrical outlet,
love, overcomes death...
The dark, has light obscurity,
turtle has its own world,
the shadow is a secret,
roots have green blood,
the toucan doesn't have
mouth, but beak...
The woodpecker without
stick wood not prick,
poet doesn't write nonsense,
he just amuses... !
The two black and white mini-twins seemed surprised beyond surprised.
Their mouths were open like codfish in the middle of a yell.
These babies were stacked on top of each other when they caught my eye.
Black-eyed babies, with elongated mouths showing a startle that fell.
“Don’t touch that!” My mommy screamed at me, as I began to reach
Now I was startled, just trying to comfort them, to take away their blue.
“They are dangerous!” she and my grandmother in unison shrieked.
They are twin-minis, I thought, having no fear at all, being two.
I love the smell of fresh cut wood. Did you know that? I bet you didn’t know.
Why would you?
You never asked.
Wooden hearts dangling over a baby’s bassinet.
Be not hard like my wooden heart, chipped as a cedar output.
Wood is an insulator right?
Keeping it in like the charge of some electrical outlet cover.
Innocuous scriptures.
A vamp, that shouldn’t have, should have known better.
You should have asked me all my favorites.
I love the smell of wood, for wooden hearts cannot be broken.
Merely splintered and sawed of one’s own, free disposition and handiwork.
Let’s carve another organ.
One that can’t do anything but be whole.
Lucky wood.
Poetry is jagged and true, an inconspicuous fopa.
That’s not it.
I want to write a poem that is capturing.
One in which I can dice the words as may entice if not displease.
Here goes…
You're everything I wanted
Everything I need
You are so beautiful to me.
Joe Cocker
She was a scruffy little thing
An undernourished, pale wisp of a child
Never quite recovered from two bouts of pneumonia
Before she was a year and a half old.
Her mommy said,
"I never knowed she was sick til the neighbor told me
To take her to the doctor."
Her face was always dirty
And her white hair looked as if
She had stuck her tiny finger into an electrical outlet.
She cried continuously for her mommy,
Who had not bothered to wean her from the breast
Before sending her to the free day care across the street.
I looked, and found, deep inside this fragile waif
An inner strength and beauty
And for the first time in my life, I knew
The true meaning of love.
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.