Here’s idiomatic lines for nine.
Why does a stitch in time just save nine?
Why’s possession nine points of the law?
Indeed, why did the cat have nine tails?
Perhaps it’s because it had nine lives?
Why would someone go the whole nine yards?
Should cats and dogs be cats and canines?
Is this poem a nine days’ wonder?
If not, then I will be on cloud nine!
written 13 May 2021
checked with Poetry Soup syllable counter
There seems so little point in killing one
Whose only crime is to heal
But when he calls you a hypocrite - a whitewashed tomb
And deep inside you feel
That wrong or right, his power is more than yours
You've got to serve him or kill him
Choose him or lose him.
Fumbled and mismanaged, no one wants
To actually do the deed
Fob him off on Pilate, or Herod; they try not to get involved
But finally in pressure it's agreed
To give him up, although for what we don't quite know
Quickly bundle him on a cross
And see if he'll die.
That'll stop it all then, the whole thing will go
A nine - days wonder, blow itself out
Dead men tell no tales and do not pose a threat
Or introduce a doubt
In an empty form that one time made you feel secure
Preserve your dignity
Lose your integrity
It didn't stop it all though did it?
The ripples of his life still spread
People still believe and live as if his paradoxes work
And he isn't really dead
And he still stirs up something in this day
Which try as you will
You can't kill.
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.