Caught In Fewer Words (rev)

Have you ever noticed that shorter poems
get to bat on many more occasions than
their over-lengthy brethren?
Is that a fact in part explaining Laws of
Conservation claiming spent creative
energy cannot be reclaimed for free?
Or is it just a fallacy, an urban myth to
keep them short, that brevity enhances
wit and lengthy poems are full of shit.
Where writers let a poem grow as poems
breathe, a poet knows the life they weave
demands you leave them unconstrained.
Love of words and slave to sounds and
rhythms that abound in treasured, tangled
lines will not abbreviate in smaller kind.
Those who dwell in fewer words and taut
expressions must rebel; curse you, tell the truth
you swine, the shorter verse must be declined!
The truth is not a mystery – nor governed by
a magic wand or intellect or lack of time,
but just extent of attention span.
© 2006, I.D. Carswell