Used Poems

To a Progressive Poet

Your poems read as staggered prose;
the rhythm of the words escapes you.
One assumes, un-mused, you chose
a free-verse prison to run into.

You are modern. And it shows
in lack of structure, meter, beat.
Your emperor, set free of clothes
meanders on unsteady feet

exposed as naked, fending blows
from anarch subjects bored to tears
by cryptic, existential woes
and dreary imagery. One hears

within the verbiage you compose
a load of godless free-form tripe.
The lyrical ebb achieves new lows;
the scent is somewhat over-ripe . . .

Bitter Poetaste in Mouth

Lightweight free-verse exploration,
withered ghosts and wisps of phrase,
breezy unamusing musings
barely raise

a titter, tear or lyric warning –
fail to reach a middling height;
then subside to shallow murmurs
(not quite).

Teenage existentialism
cryptic, dull confessional mush;
suitable for a poker-faced
unroyal flush.

Must you set this stuff in motion
fizzling through our universe:
half-bright comets leaving trails
of boring verse?

Incoherent thoughts meander
through your words like fish through nets
unable to ensnare your reader.
One forgets

whatever it was you started saying
(weirdly spaced, unpunctuated).
Could it be such thoughts are better
left unstated?

Welsh Revival

Apr23

Dylan Thomas, drunk-ass poet,
uncorked nouns, imbibed the verb;
downed six pints and thought about it
sitting unsteadily on the curb.

Winds of word unleashed in drink
filled up to the full the poet’s sails . . .
although it tottered on the brink,
his drunken boat defied the gales.

Floating on wreckage to distant shores,
our boozy bard beheld the deep;
where whales spout forth their lyric stores
while the inebriate muses weep.

This postwar lush and lyrical fad,
was the biggest pint in the bar called Wales.
While not the worst, his verse was bad…
(but better after seven ales).

NOTE: I wrote this after perusing A Child’s Christmas in Wales, which was a big yawn
and, to me, embarrassingly bad poetry.
But some of Thomas’ early verse is beautiful (in the eye of this beholder).
So I ALMOST feel mean for scrawling this little ditty.

Interesting words about him HERE

PROMPT 23:

write a poem that responds, in some way, to another.
This could be as simple as using a line or image from another poem as a jumping-off point, or it could be a more formal poetic response to the argument or ideas raised in another poem.

PJW: Modder than Mod

Apr23

P J W

It’s the Bee’s Knees

Apr23

On the box of Midwest Butter,
in the verdant dairy pastures,
sat the smiling Indian maiden,
daughter of her tribe, the maiden.
Holding forth a golden offering;
from the box her yellow treasure
for the yet unbuttered buyer.
Gently her sweet knees protruded
from her humble beaded buckskin,
from her beaded buckskin garment
each supported by a letter;
full twin globes upon an altar.
As mammalians, when they’re nursing
seek the rounded gifts of nature
while their hands, abreast and lifted
grasping, find the source of plenty,
swallow fast that milky manna
swallow down that flowing liquid
with a smile upon their features,
so my soul rejoiced to meet her
in the grasslands of a daydream
in the pastures of my daydream,
holding forth divine recurrence:
gift within a gift forever
churning, and imploding inwards
infinite, receding backwards
into endless Indian maidens
spreading myth upon my table
on my toast upon my table
till her tribe returns in glory . . .

(etc, etc, with apologies to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

MORE cool stuff about the Land O Lakes maiden HERE
(but THIS GUY is peeved)

Still want MORE ?

PROMPT 23:

write a poem that responds, in some way, to another.
This could be as simple as using a line or image from another poem as a jumping-off point, or it could be a more formal poetic response to the argument or ideas raised in another poem.

CONNECT/HOOK

POETIC FLUX

Used Poems

Welsh Revival

NOTE: I wrote this after perusing A Child’s Christmas in Wales, which was a big yawn
and, to me, embarrassingly bad poetry.
But some of Thomas’ early verse is beautiful (in the eye of this beholder).
So I ALMOST feel mean for scrawling this little ditty.

Interesting words about him HERE

PROMPT 23:

write a poem that responds, in some way, to another.
This could be as simple as using a line or image from another poem as a jumping-off point, or it could be a more formal poetic response to the argument or ideas raised in another poem.

PJW: Modder than Mod

P J W

It’s the Bee’s Knees

(etc, etc, with apologies to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

MORE cool stuff about the Land O Lakes maiden HERE
(but THIS GUY is peeved)

Still want MORE ?

PROMPT 23:

write a poem that responds, in some way, to another.
This could be as simple as using a line or image from another poem as a jumping-off point, or it could be a more formal poetic response to the argument or ideas raised in another poem.

NOTE: I wrote this after perusing A Child’s Christmas in Wales, which was a big yawn and, to me, embarrassingly bad poetry. But some of Thomas’ early verse is beautiful (in the eye of this beholder). So I ALMOST feel mean for scrawling this little ditty.

Interesting words about him HERE

PROMPT 23:

write a poem that responds, in some way, to another. This could be as simple as using a line or image from another poem as a jumping-off point, or it could be a more formal poetic response to the argument or ideas raised in another poem.

P J W

(etc, etc, with apologies to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

MORE cool stuff about the Land O Lakes maiden HERE (but THIS GUY is peeved)

Still want MORE ?

PROMPT 23:

write a poem that responds, in some way, to another. This could be as simple as using a line or image from another poem as a jumping-off point, or it could be a more formal poetic response to the argument or ideas raised in another poem.

NOTE: I wrote this after perusing A Child’s Christmas in Wales, which was a big yawn
and, to me, embarrassingly bad poetry.
But some of Thomas’ early verse is beautiful (in the eye of this beholder).
So I ALMOST feel mean for scrawling this little ditty.

write a poem that responds, in some way, to another.
This could be as simple as using a line or image from another poem as a jumping-off point, or it could be a more formal poetic response to the argument or ideas raised in another poem.

MORE cool stuff about the Land O Lakes maiden HERE
(but THIS GUY is peeved)

write a poem that responds, in some way, to another.
This could be as simple as using a line or image from another poem as a jumping-off point, or it could be a more formal poetic response to the argument or ideas raised in another poem.