Pro’s, not Prose
Ah, so you write eloquent prose.
Full of idioms and metaphors, I s'pose.
You show but don't tell, oh my!
Yet don't reveal until the end is nigh.
Words you count as you type,
Or write. Are they enough? I hear you gripe.
Flash, Short, Novel, Novella, what-have-you!
Struggle to know where it fits, don't you?
Protagonists, and heroes, and their journeys
You add backstories by the gurneys.
Rising action and climax are fun
But the middle rues if it'll e're be done.
But look at us, the poets and the bards.
Writing verse is its own reward.
There's rhythm, a flow, and there's rhyme
And can be finished, literally, in no time.
Just so we can nail the last one
We, as rhymers, are not yet done
For we can also write it as prose
Now that should rub it in your nose.
Teeth to Paper
I could gnash my teeth in some form of sputtered word,
drool down over the white sheet until blue and red ink bleeds.
Bled.
In all technicality, here, I could speak the written word until eyes glaze over.
A stage of my single body, a crowd of faces shadowed in black.
No lights to break their glossy hearts, sharp with ice.
Glistening wet lips, ready to rip my art shred to shred.
Lay that review over me,
let me know what part of literature I missed.
What major I didn't achieve,
of what poetry is.
Ought to be.
For what is a green bowl of lettuce,
is my spoken word.
I'll take the flakes of fluttering broken white over green any day.
For if I could draw the ink pen down against my veins,
I'd hope it bled black, not red.
A Bludgeoned Art Form
Better sipped like fine wine, we butcher poetry like college kids desperate to get drunk. Heavy-handed, clunky, and telling lines full of red-ink like in third grade when the form is first unfurled like a fragile baby revealed to its older siblings who longed for it, cared for it and spoke to it softly through the mother's belly. Neither had any idea the torment it would be put through, how poetry would beae scars inflicted upon it by hurt and jealous hearts that pine for love, long for death, and dream of suicide. Left in the most random places, naked, for all to see. From bathroom stalls to spitballed Bostonian pavements, poetry is dropped and forgotten by its maker, who just needed to scream a few lines. There are no edits. There is no technique. Only the too few connoiseurs who still sip their wine and wrap up cozily with poetry and perform careful vivisections of every detail to get the picture. With patience and poise, these few still run their eyes along the wrinkled fabric of emotions and paint an image as they smooth out the edges, pressing and steaming and wiggling, to create a tapestry out of the coil of words they weaved together.
Poetry Schmoetry
I wax the shine pedantic
To pass my time romantic
I choose to rhyme, I choose to shine
T'ain't no crime the words I mine
My words flow as susurrus
A litter ate its stuff as such
Ass, Oh, Nance! I say, perchance
Makes smooth my say and vesper rants
Metered in frenetic, melodic rhythms
Squirm phonetic organisms
Orgiastically orchestral orgasmic
In organically spun organza silk
A silver spondee in my mouth
Announced my birth from a place down south
Before they cut my pulsing cord
They strummed impulsively my major chord
I was born for rhyme and rhythm and song
And wine and women--is that so wrong?
