(Repost of a former poem, “If I Could Change The Past,” written 2016)
September eleven, two-thousand-one-
dark age of homeland terror had begun.
If only I could change this horrid past-
alleviate deep pain from grief at last.
Three thousand souls were lost forever, then:
three hundred forty-three were brave firemen,
so many whom I'd come to know before,
when they'd stop by our fire equipment store.
Our County is just sixty miles away
from New York City, South of us, and they
would often live up North in New York State,
commute each shift- but many met their fate.
One family resided on our street.
That morning, he left home- for death to meet.
So many others we will never see
who purchased goods from us so faithfully.
For those who died, whose bodies were not found,
we gifted presentation helmets bound
to loved ones for the funerals they held.
Such awful, somber days, unparalleled.
If I could change the past and turn back time,
erase that day of tragedy and crime,
my heart, with all the others, would rejoice
that these poor souls could live a life of choice.
Foul tempest wind dost beset thy slumber,
its rain doth drain and dampen to stupor.
I rithe at thy great agony's bequest,
haunted by frightening reminiscence.
'Still the torrid pleas of thy soul!', I cry.
Thunder does naught to distill the shrill screams.
Lightning drenches me in thick vulgar sweat;
heart racing, mind pacing, fervent unrest.
'Will I e'er see a brighter morn than this?';
for foul tempest has consumed most my years.
But just then, when all seemed undone, foregone;
rain culls, clouds lift, and a rainbow now dawns.
09.02.2026
('Resist the devil, and he shall flee')
('I have set my rainbow in the clouds...')
Hear the cry of begging stop
The evil silence out for blood
A haunted shadow stains our walls
Fear unleashed with hellish force
The crows address their common lord
A hungry feast if the righteous fall.
Say a prayer for your soul
Before the wicked takes it toll.
Unholy Serpent Dark and wild
I know that Terror wants a bride tonight
Ashes to Ashes
what a kiss of sin
Panic is free: the curse of innocence
I have a serpent painted on my ear,
It always tells the truth I want to hear;
“O, how much you have suffered,” it will say,
“To become so beautiful on this day.”
Upon a time I learned to listen well,
To all the stories it has learned to tell,
“You were born beautiful within your laughter,”
Although I wonder what it is after?
I have a serpent painted on my ear,
It has spoken truths I have come to fear,
Upon a time I learned to listen well,
To all the stories it has learned to sell.
As zephyrs tousle thro’ his hair,
He walks along the dappling shade of trees
With a flaming lily behind his ear,
With scent of pine wood and lingering rain
On the horizon, warm oak on his breath,
He wanders freely upon a midsummer.
To be a cloud as it wanders the lull
Expanse of day, as the warmth of Sol’s breath
Scatters against the skin of dark vapour —
He is a cloud.
And on and on and on and then
He stops —
Captured by a hand that wasn't there;
The grass remembered arches after gone
And dew clung in the shape of being watched,
He could hear it clearing its throat to speak.
It passed him by as a cloud.
Though I am but an ember in the wind,
my life so fleeting - to the Lord Most High.
He still sees me, He surely is El Roi,
and grants me both his mercy and reprieve.
Though Alpha and Omega, Jehovah,
my sins, He bore, upon a rugged Cross.
For His Son, Christ Jesus, paid price in full,
and trampled grave and serpent underfoot.
So may I never boast in naught but Christ,
or folly, or groan, with God's living breath.
No! Let the Prince of Peace, good Shepherd me,
for all that I am, is through Christ alone.
So temper now my head to a new song,
where you're e'er with me, and e'er will belong.
Poem of the day
05/16/2026.
'Blessed be the Name of the Lord'
Though it may get me labeled a traitor
And it surely won’t make me rich
In the face of all those who hate them
I announce: I love the French.
For De Tocqueville and Voltaire
For L’Enfant who designed DC
For the fact that without their
Aid this country would never have come to be
For Dumas, Joan of Arc, Exupery
Doctors without Borders, and
For a civilized society,
Low crime rates and beautiful land
For their gorgeous, passionate women
For Cezanne and for Gaughin
For wine valleys, chateux – earth heaven -
For Riviera, Paris, Sorbonne
For their foreign aid to the poor
And diplomatic outreach -
There is one thing I know for sure:
Hear me saying: I love the French.
To the tune of "Russians" by Sting
In America and Australia there's a growing hysteria
Comparing those who see global warming threat
To the North Koreans and the Soviets.
Mr. Inhofe said scientists lied to you,
I don't subscribe to that point of view
It's such an ignorant thing to tell
I hope deniers love their kids as well.
How can I save my little girl from the rule of Texas Oil?
We see misuses of common sense
By those the Right side of political fence
They don't care about biology
But only their false ideology
Believe me when I say to you
I hope deniers love their children too.
These people claim rationality as they deny planetary reality
And believe to be the soul of the nation as they practice prevarication
Freedom and wealth do not require
To burn oil or set rainforests on fire.
Mr. Limbaugh said it can't be true,
I don't subscribe to that point of view,
It's such an ignorant thing to tell
I hope deniers love their kids as well.
The facts of climatology
Are not dependent on ideology
What might save us, me, and you
Is if deniers love their children too.
Life is my power
Fire is my flesh
In every hour
Essences clash
Burn through the darkness
Into the dream -
Hear me and mark this,
Truth will not seem
Anything pure
Nor anything dark -
Truth will for sure
Be nothing like stark -
Over the ground
And around the lake
Truth coils around
And then stings like a snake.
There is a daylight
When things are true
And there is twilight
When all you knew
Vanishes, fades
And then blends into one -
Into the shades
And away from the sun:
Into oblivion
Into the void
Into obsidian
Chasms. Thus destroyed,
Truth yields to lies
And then soars like a lark
When people's eyes
Are tired of the dark.
I lost my mind today -
Oh boy -
and all the thoughts I had
just seemed to vanish
in the haze
surrounding my head
It seemed so wise -
so potent -
so infinitely dull -
complete with thought, effete with pomp
emblazoned on its skull.
An ounce of heart
a pound of spleen
a smattering of phlegm
A bit of code
a bunch of will
And a thick soup of memes:
All this was all mixed
and cut to bits
A chewy marble blend
From which I built
A vague relief
Of life that I intend:
Where has it gone, do tell me?
Where is my upscale mind?
I look without,
I look within,
But nothing can I find.
It seems the mind has melted
And I must build anew
Today's mind-melded structure
With but a quart of glue.
Project the mind - it resonates with thunder;
Reject the mind - around you it burns.
Intrepid joy - impassioned restless wonder -
The heart-suffused and life-rich way to learn -
Intrinsic conflaggrations, hard to pity
Or to respect, or even yet to see -
The nature's splendor reaching into city
To render its inhabitants half-free
Until joy drops, and out appears concept
And meaning - this, if only for some!
And from beneath the axioms, a rocket
Ballasts into the space, explodes and is gone
And then - another time, another meaning,
The meaning is constructed from all sides
And forms the structure that informs the seeming
Which then becomes the vision of mankind -
And then come other meanings and perceivings
Constructed like dynamic SQL…
The culture deepens, thickens as it's dreaming
And builds to levels more removed from hell.
Old as I Feel
Kevin Davis 2025
You say, “You’re only as old as you feel!”
Then why do my bones ache — is this pain real?
I know my true age, though I think I’m twenty,
Just can’t do the things that I once did aplenty.
I park in handicap spots now, roll on lidocaine,
Walk with a cane or umbrella — sunshine or rain.
Take more pills than Carter’s, wear glasses to see,
Even the largest print still looks tiny to me.
But none of this dims how I’m living my life;
I accept my limits and stay free of strife.
I rise every morning with smile and “Good day!”
Ready for whatever comes, come what may.
So if you’re like me, you believe what I think:
I’m only as old as I choose — and I don’t blink.
I won’t miss a moment or fear what’s to come;
I love this life and all in it — glad it’s not done.
I died for beauty – twas my choice
To end my life this way;
In every note of her voice
Was universe at play:
Twas sparkling, shining, shimmering,
Twas elegant and bright,
In it the world was glimmering
As I then held her tight.
I died for beauty – as I did
My lifeforce to her went
And from the shackles it her freed
To live by her intent:
She needed lifeforce to be strong
And then to carry on
With universe to get along
And sing again her song.
I died for beauty, so it lives,
Is by me fertilized,
Shimmers and glimmers and conceives
And is now realized,
And though I died, what it gave birth
Was better than was I,
And now is set upon her course
To grow and multiply.
Butterflies float
With petals and feathers
In every note
Of your voice. In its tenor -
Nectarine, white,
Full of light, full of sky -
There is delight -
And I will not ask why
Sometimes your voice
Shimmers like a bright star -
Sometimes it's close
Sometimes it's far
Sometimes I hear in it
Rivers and streams
Sometimes I see in it
Passions and dreams
Sometimes it crests
Like a wave in a sea
Sometimes it nests
Like a bird in a tree
Sometimes it rings
Like a vanishing bell
Sometimes it sings
As if casting a spell -
Sometimes it flings
Like a lasso, ensnares
Prey. Or grows wings
And then flies everywhere -
Sometimes it drops
Like a leaf from an oak
Sometimes it stops
Like a belltower clock
Sometimes it wafts
Like a sweet summer breeze
Or like a raft
It floats over the seas -
Sometimes I feel it
Caressing my ear
Holding me in it
Drawing me near.
Sometimes I glimpse
What your voice holds within
When it so seems,
I can fully glean
Its warmth and softness
Its passion and peace
Then I am lost in
The most perfect bliss.
Swivel
and Sparkle
and Splinter
passion will bear
Aghast
over serrated
STARSCAPES
blistering past
the past
AGONY
Scalds and
Stumbles
Destiny
flings
AJAR
seething
delirious
rumble
of a dismembered
S T A R -
Flushed in a Ream of Fire -
Redolent and
Untrue -
scorching the sky
ENTIRE
over remains of
YOU -
over charades of splendor -
over cascades of pain -
over a long-lost
Laughter
desolate and insane -
over volition
SHATTERED
into a silent scream -
over intention
SCATTERED
into a field
of seem -
over a lifeforce
blended
with a malignant lie
over a soul
upended
in an obverse reply -
Over my clutching wristbones -
over your lips of dew -
over two Haunted Heartforms
Blended and
Torn Anew - -
Vanishing passion
Clambered
Shriveled like drops
of doom
and Essence remained
Dismembered
In the Blistering light
of the moon.
Introduction
The pleasure of reading iambic pentameter lies in the tension between expectation and surprise. A steady underlying pulse invites the ear forward, yet a persuasive poem rarely sounds like a metronome. It may tighten into ceremony, loosen toward conversation, hesitate around grief, or accelerate through argument. As you read the community poems, listen for the moment when an apparently familiar cadence begins to express a distinctly individual temperament.
Seen side by side, these poems can vary widely in subject, voice, length, rhyme, and dramatic situation. One poet may use the meter to support an intimate confession; another may build a public address, a comic complaint, a narrative scene, or a meditation on nature. Some writers let syntax flow smoothly across the lines, while others create friction between sentence and measure. Such differences reveal that the form is not merely a container. Its pulse can reassure, challenge, conceal, or intensify what is being said.
Browsing multiple examples also teaches the ear more effectively than studying an isolated model. Read beyond the first poem and compare where writers preserve the expected movement, where they disturb it, and how quickly the cadence returns. Notice which poems feel natural despite their control and which lines become memorable because sound, image, and emphasis converge. The collection offers a practical encounter with metrical judgment: not only whether a pattern can be recognized, but whether it gives the language emotional and rhetorical force.
Reading Guide
Reading iambic pentameter well requires more than detecting a recurring beat. The deeper pleasure comes from hearing how that beat interacts with spoken emphasis, sentence shape, imagery, and emotion. Begin by reading silently for meaning, then aloud at a natural pace. Avoid exaggerating every expected stress; instead, notice where ordinary speech settles into the meter and where the poet creates resistance. As you browse the poems in this collection, compare not only metrical smoothness but also the artistic purpose served by smoothness, disruption, pause, and return.
- Listen to the opening movement. An opening line can establish calm authority, dramatic urgency, intimacy, or playful formality before the subject is fully clear. Ask how quickly each poet makes the pulse audible and what expectation that beginning creates.
- Notice the relationship between stress and meaning. Important nouns, verbs, and emotional words may receive extra prominence when speech and meter cooperate. Ask which words your voice naturally emphasizes and whether those emphases reveal the poem's real concerns.
- Attend to purposeful disturbance. A local roughness may register shock, reluctance, anger, uncertainty, or a change of speaker. Compare several poets' approaches and ask whether a variation sharpens the moment or merely makes the line difficult to voice.
- Watch the line endings. A completed phrase can give the cadence composure and weight, while enjambment can pull thought beyond the metrical boundary. Ask whether each ending invites rest, suspense, reinterpretation, or immediate continuation.
- Hear sound beyond the pulse. Consonants, vowels, internal echoes, and rhyme can reinforce or counter the meter. Ask whether the soundscape feels fluid, harsh, hushed, comic, or ceremonial, and how that quality suits the poem's subject.
- Study turns and closure. Because the meter builds expectation through recurrence, a shift in argument or tone can feel especially decisive. Ask where the poem changes direction and whether its final cadence resolves the pressure, complicates it, or deliberately leaves it unsettled.
After reading aloud, return to the strongest line and identify what made it memorable. Comparing those moments across community poems will refine both your ear and your sense of how metrical craft serves meaning.
Writing Tips
Approach iambic pentameter as a way of shaping thought, not as a syllable-fitting exercise. It is particularly useful for material that benefits from sustained movement: an argument unfolding, a speaker wrestling with conflicting feelings, a scene gathering dramatic pressure, or a meditation that needs both freedom and control. In workshop, the central question is not simply whether the meter can be heard. It is whether the poem sounds inevitable in its chosen voice.
- Choose material with an inner counterforce. The meter thrives when composure meets disturbance: love complicated by doubt, grief held inside ceremony, humor delivered with mock gravity, or anger forced into articulate speech. That tension gives the recurring cadence something meaningful to contain.
- Draft for voice before policing the pattern. Write several lines in the speaker's natural vocabulary, then listen for phrases that already lean toward the desired movement. Building from living speech usually produces stronger results than assembling a line from interchangeable metrical parts.
- Place consequential words where the ear can value them. Revise so that key actions, images, and contrasts receive natural emphasis. A metrically tidy line can still fail if an article or preposition sounds more important than the word carrying the emotional burden.
- Use variation as expressive pressure. A poem need not make every line equally smooth. Let resistance occur where the speaker hesitates, argues, interrupts, or encounters something difficult. The surrounding regularity should make that disturbance legible rather than accidental.
- Let syntax and lineation cooperate or compete deliberately. End-stopped lines can produce dignity, certainty, or accumulating pronouncements. Enjambment can create speed, suspense, or a double meaning at the break. Alternate them according to the poem's developing thought, not from habit.
- Avoid padding and strained inversion. Beginners sometimes add empty modifiers, contract words unnaturally, or rearrange syntax solely to repair the rhythm. If a line sounds imported from another era or says less than the surrounding lines, rewrite the sentence rather than disguising the problem.
- Shape a sound world beyond meter. Rhyme, alliteration, and vowel patterning can make the cadence more memorable, but excessive agreement may turn the poem sing-song. Use sonic echoes to connect important ideas, and permit quieter passages where meaning needs room.
- Earn the ending. A final line can close with balance, break the established movement, or carry the sentence past an expected resting place. Choose according to the emotional result. A polished cadence cannot substitute for a genuine turn, discovery, or consequential final image.
During revision, read the draft aloud twice: first conversationally, then with slightly heightened attention to the underlying pulse. Mark places where you stumble, overemphasize an unimportant word, or predict the wording too easily. Revise sound, pacing, and imagery together rather than repairing rhythm in isolation. Finally, ask another reader to perform the poem without coaching; where that reader naturally pauses and stresses words will reveal whether the meter supports the voice or competes with it.
Interesting Facts
- Regularity makes small changes audible. Once readers internalize the prevailing pulse, a delayed emphasis or unexpected opening can carry disproportionate expressive weight. The change may be slight on the page yet register strongly in performance.
- Stress depends partly on context. The same word can receive different emphasis according to syntax, contrast, and speaker intention. This makes the meter more flexible than a purely visual count suggests and rewards natural reading over mechanical chanting.
- Punctuation can transform the cadence. A comma, dash, or sentence ending changes breath and rhetorical timing even when the underlying metrical movement remains recognizable. Poets can therefore create hesitation or urgency without abandoning the poem's rhythmic identity.
- The same pulse can support opposite moods. Smooth movement may sound serene in a love poem, ominously controlled in a dramatic monologue, or absurdly grand in a comic poem. Emotional effect comes from the relationship among rhythm, diction, image, and situation.
- Line breaks create a second rhythm. Enjambment may urge the reader forward while the meter offers recurring points of orientation. That counterpoint allows a poem to feel controlled and restless at once, especially when syntax repeatedly postpones completion.
- Rhyme is an artistic choice rather than the meter's sole source of unity. A poet may use recurring rhyme to heighten ceremony or omit it so that rhythm bears more of the structural work. Compare community poems to hear how different sound systems change the meter's visibility.
- Variation becomes clearer through comparison. One poem may favor conversational ease while another foregrounds stately cadence. Reading several interpretations helps distinguish expressive flexibility from accidental awkwardness and broadens the idea of what successful metrical control can sound like.
Popular Themes
Subject matter and meter continually reshape each other. Iambic pentameter can lend private feeling a public poise, give argument forward momentum, or place turbulent experience against an audible order. The themes below are literary possibilities rather than a statistical ranking. As you read the community poems, consider why a poet might want this particular balance of speech, recurrence, and pressure.
- Love and desire. The cadence can hold praise, longing, doubt, and contradiction within the same measured voice. Variations become especially expressive when confidence gives way to vulnerability or attraction encounters resistance.
- Grief and remembrance. Metrical continuity can suggest the effort to speak coherently while feeling threatens that composure. Pauses, broken syntax, and altered emphasis allow absence to disturb an otherwise sustaining pattern.
- Nature and seasonal change. Recurrence can echo cycles without merely imitating them. A poet may set steady rhythm against sudden weather, decay, migration, or growth, allowing change to become more perceptible against continuity.
- Conflict and moral argument. The line offers enough room for assertion, qualification, rebuttal, and consequence. It can support a speaker who reasons persuasively while rhythm exposes urgency, defensiveness, or uncertainty beneath the argument.
- Dramatic character and interior debate. A controlled cadence gives monologue shape, while deviations can reveal where a persona loses composure. This makes the form useful for speakers whose stated beliefs differ from what their language unintentionally discloses.
- Humor and satire. Formal poise can make trivial complaints sound magnificently serious, or expose inflated language by contrasting it with ordinary subject matter. Timing at the line ending can also sharpen reversal and comic surprise.
- Everyday contemporary life. Work, family, school, sports, food, and neighborhood scenes gain fresh tension when colloquial speech meets a measured line. The challenge is to preserve present-day diction without flattening the cadence or forcing artificial grandeur.
Browse poems that address similar subjects and notice how differently their emotional movements unfold. One writer may use the meter as reassurance, another as restraint, and another as something the speaker pushes against. Comparing those choices reveals how theme becomes interpretation rather than category.
Editorial Insights
The central artistic tension in iambic pentameter is the negotiation between recurrence and living speech. If the pattern disappears entirely, the poem loses the pressure that makes its movement distinctive. If every beat is delivered with equal force, language becomes mechanical and meaning begins to serve the meter rather than the poem. Memorable work occupies the responsive middle: the pulse remains available to the ear, but syntax, emotion, and vocal character continually alter how it is experienced.
Strong poems make structure feel necessary by connecting rhythmic decisions to the speaker's situation. A composed cadence may embody self-command; an awkward or delayed movement may expose fear, resistance, or divided intention. Editors and attentive readers notice when important images arrive with convincing emphasis, when sentence length works against the line to create suspense, and when a return to smoothness feels like emotional recovery rather than technical correction. In such poems, meter is not decorative music added after the fact. It becomes part of the poem's thinking.
A technically recognizable draft may still feel inert. Common weaknesses include predictable phrasing, filler inserted to preserve cadence, archaic inversions that do not belong to the voice, and a relentless pattern that leaves every line at the same emotional temperature. Over-explanation is another danger: because the line encourages balanced statements, a poet may keep clarifying an idea after the image has already carried it. Conversely, a sequence of polished lines can remain underdeveloped if no conflict deepens, no perception changes, and no ending revises what came before. Technical control creates expectation; it does not by itself provide discovery.
Individuality remains visible through diction, sentence architecture, humor, imagery, dramatic stance, and the particular places where a poet chooses friction over flow. One writer may create intimacy by letting contemporary speech settle lightly into the meter; another may cultivate ceremony, compression, or argumentative force. This is why comparing multiple community poems is so valuable. The comparison trains the ear to separate mere regularity from expressive control and isolated roughness from purposeful variation. It also reveals that quality does not depend on one ideal performance of the form, but on the coherence between a poem's rhythmic choices and the experience it asks the reader to enter.
Read, Write & Share
Read several community poems before settling on an impression of what iambic pentameter can do. Compare a conversational treatment with a more ceremonial one, listen for meaningful variations, and notice how different poets manage line endings, turns, and final cadences. A thoughtful comment might identify a line whose rhythm strengthens its image or ask how a deliberate disruption changes the speaker's tone.
Then try composing your own poem and publish it on PoetrySoup. Let the shared form become a point of conversation rather than a test of sameness: preserve your natural voice, make each rhythmic choice answer to the subject, and invite readers to hear how your interpretation differs from the poems around it.
Collection Statistics
This collection contains 928 poems, providing many opportunities to compare voices, subjects, tonal effects, and approaches to metrical movement. Within a gathering of this size, readers can encounter poets who follow familiar conventions closely, adapt them to contemporary speech, or challenge expectations through purposeful variation. Reading across the collection offers a fuller perspective than treating any single poem as the definitive model.
Iambic Pentameter Categories
Read wonderful iambic pentameter poetry on the following sub-topics:
christmas, dog, family, food, friends, funny, kids, life, love, music, nature, school, sports, war
and more.
Definition | What is Iambic Pentameter in Poetry?
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.