You’ll know him, most folk do,
his knowledge is astounding,
an encyclopaedic guru,
his magnitude abounding.
Not only is he “The Oracle”,
he has opinions too!
Be it historical or metaphorical,
he’ll tell you what to do!
Don’t expect to air your view,
that’ll never be allowed,
he always knows far more than you,
get used to being cowed.
Never expect anything cheery,
that’s simply not part of his code.
It’s all gloom, doom and dreary,
and how he loves to goad.
Never looks on the bright side,
there isn’t one, in his head,
he’ll only give you the downside,
despite whatever you’ve read.
Happy he certainly isn’t,
don’t expect laughter and fun,
so when he’s threatening to visit,
the best thing to do is just run!!
Ruth Mawdsley
August 2019
Check your cheques
You must realise or recognise
Quarrelling analysing skillfully
Without criticism centre or colour
Judgement no theatre of grey of arguement
Like a boats draft determined by draughtsman
Curbing ones thoughts like avoiding a roads kerbs
An encyclopaedic almost an un-parallelled programme
A marvellous jewellery there not of aluminium but of pure Gold
Just English
Tell me, not to break the rules
The things I'm not supposed to do
The words I'm not supposed to say
The dreams I'm forbidden to dream
The scream's I'm dumb to scream
The tears I'm heartless to cry
The life that this is hard to die
The world that I live in today
Is it really round or is a flat world
I've got wings, a pair of them
I can't fly though
I don’t have wings when I'm dreaming
But I fly like and eagle somewhere,
May be the sky
I may not be a great man
But I to have a dream
A dream
Now I'm in an ocean
I'm in full state of my mind
I know that I can't swim
But something inside me tells me
You shouldn’t even if you knew how to
There's something running against my feet
A fish of some type I guess
I don’t know what species that is
I even doubt the species that we are
In fact I completely forgot who I am
I look up in the encyclopaedia
It read '*****sapiens sapiens'
What does that mean to me now?
A tide blew me into the sand
And away from the encyclopaedic research of mine
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.