I
To all you wannabe poets,
Here's a word of advice ere you start:
If you want folks to love it,
Keep your ego out of it,
When you write always write from the heart.
II
It's great fun to write haiku and sonnets
About rainbows and gay Easter bonnets,
But if you find them too terse,
You can flesh out your verse,
And festoon it with quatrains and nonets.
III
Poets come, and poets go, and poets coincide.
Some rhyme time and time again, others "free verse" with pride.
But those who let their egos reign
Oft fade and never scribe again.
They succumb to the literary sin of authorcide.
IV
Writing is for me both pain and pleasure,
The time I spend with pad and pen I treasure.
I must confess, though,
Sometimes I stress so,
When syllables I choose to use refuse to measure.
Why do I write? What do I write? Who am I when I do it?
Questions that would be answered differently every day,
As I never wake up the same person I was yesterday.
Every poem I write comes from a direction I did not plan.
They pop into my head and follow me about during my day.
Some insist on being written immediately.
Other poems stay in my mind for years
Not yet ready to spring forth and show the world what we are about.
There are many me’s inside this body, and they all want a voice.
I write because I cannot NOT write.
It is something I am compelled and propelled to do.
I write fantasy – faeries, dragons, unicorns, gargoyles, space ships.
I write sonnets, diminished hexaverses, ninets, nonets, tankas, haiku.
I write of everyday things, I write of common ordinary blah things.
I write of hope and optimism and tenacity.
I write sorrow.
An alliterative idea will jump onto my soul highway and I will change directions.instantly.
I am flexible.
I am tenacious.
Ideas roam around inside my head daily, begging to become poems.
I try to comply with them all.
It is what I do.
I am a writer.
I. DEFIANCE
Fie!
Must I
Explain why
I’m moved to sigh
Whenever I try
To contradict the lie
With which some people imply
That it’s wrong for me to defy
Those people or things I must decry?
II. CONFORMITY
They
Who may
Choose to play
By the rules stay
On track and obey
Them and try not to stray
From the path; they will repay
Their debts, make sure that what they say
Is the truth, and do their best each day.
III. HILARITY
Lest
Unguessed
Or finessed,
It must be stressed
I find I’m impressed
That you are so obsessed
With making a joke or jest
In which no trope would be repressed
And irony is deployed with zest
Written for, and "Defiance" submitted to, Charles Messina's Rhyming Nonet Contest
Nonets In Reverse Order.
We see children coming out to play
as parents watch. It is their way,
when through broken skies of gray
is felt a warm sun’s ray.
Rain weary folks pray,
that should it stay,
it’s okay
today!
Yea!
Ole!
We say!
Hip Hooray,
for any day
that’s a sunny day!
With no clouds seen today:
it’s so unlike yesterday.
A damp, dreary and rainy day:
when wind driven rains came by our way!
Rhymer. December 16th, 2017.
Unless I write the piece in reverse,
it fizzles and dies by line four.
There is something intriguing,
viciously perplexing,
and tricky about
those Nonets that
cause me to
end up
stuck.
Then there is that other Jack who has
burned his posterior by his
tremendous leaping over
that hot candlestick, but
he is okay now
and ready for
another
happy
day.
And, who could forget Miss Muffet yet?
She of such terrible fright when
that silly old spider sat
too close to her tuffet.
Wouldn't you run off
if it were to
happen that
way for
you?
THE END .... whew! Glad that's over with .... smile
I chose to fight and not to flee,
From troubled feelings haunting me.
One look, within my weary soul,
Exposed an ever-gaping hole.
With introspective ink I write,
To bring foreclosure to my plight.
On form and meter I rely,
While keeping free verse standing by.
In healing cadence, new to me.
(Stagnation came from living free.)
A new persona will be found,
Before I leave this form-go-round.
Through sonnets, nonets, villanelle,
My metered fears I hope to quell.
Shall I find comfort in these forms
Or run back to my free verse norms?
I might be seeking, after all,
The haven of a hallowed hall.
Long known to poets of great worth,
And find therein my own re-birth.
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