Warning Will Robinson!

Must’ve got it wrong, silly me,
thought the way to poetic decency
was doing the right thing – writing
deferential poetry not boring pants
off punters with endless re-runs of
slavish, pseudo-onomatopoeic rhyme.

But you can’t help see a breakneck,
boring-to-death race where the rules
of the game must be fifty posts daily
of garden waste clipped, sorted and
weighed in miasmic meanderings of
naively misguided surplus energy.

Or is it all that unseemly? Maybe an
agrarian revolution is underway and
composted vegetable matter is indeed
today’s poetic currency! Must brush off
the garden gloves wield a pair of pruning
shears and get myself started properly.
© 23 May 2008, I. D. Carswell

Discerning Ear

Started out sans peace and light, at last
a verse which eased concern and brought
a smile – began again to like a nagging
curse that’s banging fragile frontal lobes
of mouldy-cheese recycled brain.

Why do novice writers pen such tripe?
They’d not survive a public reading – yet
delight expressed for verse read well is
heady beer. Durst I suggest, first read your
verse aloud – listen with discerning ear!

The ear will know where words are right
or wrong before the reader’s plight is
compromised; a chance to rectify a line,
change the tone, improve the metric slant
– enhance the inner tune you want.

Or listen to another read the piece, hear
your words misread and mangled, dead
& dying as you grit your teeth, agonise
for words you meant an essence of the
best of rhythms flow. Oh yes, try it – you

will guess how once they’re writ, your
words are at the mercy of a readers’ wit.
Or lack of it. So sing them out aloud, listen
in, discard or make the changes long before
you rashly post such dreadful things...
© 7 February 2008, I. D. Carswell

You Eat Bovine

Refined to lines of trimeter, he tried
to pose the sonnet he desired to be
a subtle way to move young poets he
described as cattle in a field of flies. 
It paid no dividends nor made a change;
the poets wrote estranged from form he knew.
Pentameter, tetrameter just flew
from pens in random flight as if arranged.

Iambs, spondee, trochee were liberally
abused in rhythms broken and confused;
the words came out of sheer banality,
with metricality, as such, refused.
God’s fate, he sighed, you eat and fart bovine
while dining words sublime in verdant glades.
© 4 February 2008, I. D. Carswell

Complete Inanity

It is depressingly simple –
a better declaration on
PH* poetic quality than
zero, zip or zilch
is calling it inanity.

A few synonyms include:
idiocy, silliness, stupidity,
ridiculousness, pettiness,
senselessness, absurdity,
illogicality, irrationality.

Add: farce, folly, futility,
vainness, childishness,
ludicrousness; yes, keep
adding ‘...ys & ‘esses to
inevitably culminate in
insanity & uselessness!

What do I mean? Seen
the poet status – by IP
hits? Go rattle your wits.
Don’t worry, you’re not
about to be enlightened!

To understand these
rules of engagement
and remain poetically
un-estranged would be
complete inanity!
© 1 February 2008, I. D. Carswell

* Poem Hunter website: http://www.poemhunter.com/