Monostich
A poem in a single line ?
A wonder in one hit ?
The very soul of wit, will you be mine ?
Well, can I make my rusty lyric shine,
Or leaden meter fit ?
But oh, the rhymes, the bloody rhymes !
Those crimes whose chimes aren’t worth the strike –
It’s true, I’ve taken hours sometimes
For just five seconds at the mic.
So a poem in a line, you say ?
I haven’t time for one today,
But here’s a dozen dashed off, if you like…
Mind the Gap
There’s a new Poem on the Underground,
Right next to the ad for the dating app –
Looks like there’s another one, further down,
On the other end of the network map.
But the train’s too full to shuffle along,
So I’ve just this one to read today –
On my morning commute with the weary throng,
Through another week of beige and grey.
So let’s see what it has to say:
As the carriage rattles and brake-shoes feud,
The poem prattles on solitude –
As my neighbours crush me, jolt and seethe,
It says don’t touch me, let me breathe –
As the battered shrubs and brownfields pass,
Its country clubs are a joy of grass –
In a world of stressed anomalies
It offers endless homilies.
I must confess, I’d rather comedies…
Self-Promotion
I slipped a copy of my self-published collection
Into the longed-for shelf
Of the Poetry Library.
Finally, I had overcome the rejection,
To stand alongside some
Of my heroes, my tribe, my key.
Oh sure, one day a snooty librarian
Will pluck-up my root
And toss it away –
But until then, let it be egalitarian
Where a browser can see
What it has to say.
And it isn’t only my guerrilla slim volumes
That compete with the filler
Of our daily round –
I’ve also prepared some placards à la plume
To cover-up the Bards
On the Underground.
But my best reach for well-placed words, I think
Is not to just paste
My flyers on a fence –
But when I fill all the walls with my ink
In the lonely stalls
Of convince.
I’m a Poet, Not an Actor
Don’t ask me to read my verse
That sounds so dulcet in my head
But strangles on my tongue, and worse –
So I remain a poet,
Who must write my music down instead –
And never sing it, only show it.
Hire an actor if you’re glad to hear,
The thoughts of a muted man –
I’m just lyrics, they’re the ballardeer.
An actor who can lift my lines
In that easy way I never can –
And dress my stanzas to the nines !
An actor who will never mumble,
Never lilt, or gabble blindly on –
Whose feet will never stumble,
But bestride my words with vigour
Till this duckling soars a swan.
However small my print, they’ll make me bigger…
They whisper, pause, then roar and rally,
Words that need to be enbodied –
To the summet, down the valley –
If my words are calls to action,
It is they who see them lobbied
Into ears for satisfaction.
Submissions Policy
We are a prestigious journal of literature,
Just three times a year –
We favour the terribly serious, dense and obscure,
We hope that’s clear.
We’ve got a readership high in the double-digits,
We’re highbrow, yet cosy –
We look-down on rhyming as only for populist midgets,
But love verse that’s prosy.
So if you send us one, just one, of your poems,
Make sure it’s unseen –
For if you dared to succumb to a previous showing,
It’s no longer clean.
It might be only your blog, and viewed by only a few,
But that is enough !
What were you thinking, to waste your words, adieu,
Like any old stuff ?
You should have kept it locked in a drawer,
Until our benevolent sun
Is shone down upon it, as no eyes before,
Its virgin lines undone.
If you’ve said it before, we won’t help you say it again –
You’re spent goods, my dear.
For we are the ultra-exclusive, and so shall remain,
Just three times a year.
I sent in my poems, my beautiful poems,
For the algorithm to read.
These weren’t my so-sos, my whatevs, or ho-hums,
But the ones where my spirit is freed.
The greatest I’ve mastered, the finest I’ve crafted –
But the AI just shrugs as I plead.
Rejected by binary, silicon-shafted –
With empty and split-second speed.
But I don’t know why I expected a hearing
From anyone human, indeed –
And so all my labours will not be appearing
My children just hung-out to bleed.
For this must be why I am never selected,
The victim of corporate greed.
It cannot be talent that sees me rejected,
For how can my stuff not succeed…?
Archipelago
Some say poets are randy goats
With endless groupies from the herd –
The source of passion-dripping quotes,
And rock stars of the spoken word.
And yes, their tongues are best when spoken,
Lilting, accented, uncowed –
As something primal has awoken,
Glamours cast when breathed aloud.
Some say poets are balding folks,
Bespectacled and analytic,
Full of dry and clever jokes
That half will miss…but not the critic.
Their mumbled tones are flat and beige,
Each vaguely RP, lacking hype –
No, theirs are poems for the page,
And come to life when set in type.
Some say poets are dreamy souls
Who pluck their verses from the ether –
Whispered into pigeonholes
By some unkempt yet soft bequeather.
Screamed and rambled on the stage,
And scribbled down to be forgot –
They’re sometimes tortured, sometimes sage,
And yet their words still hit the spot.
Some say poets, and far too many,
Neither speak nor set to ink –
They never want to share with any,
Terrified of what we’ll think.
And good luck to them, writing verse
Within their heads, a private lay.
There’s none are better, none are worse –
They’re poets all – as some would say.
A Legacy in Bits
Ev’rything I’ve ever written,
Ev’ry poem, ev’ry play,
Are strings of ones and zeros on a flickering display.
Permanently hidden
In a hard-drive or a cloud,
So hard to leave behind for work so proud.
No-one knows my password,
Save my hacker and myself,
Since I never passed it on to someone else.
This security we’ve mastered
Will leave all my work unread –
It might as well be locked-up in my head !
Fork it !
I don’t want to tell you how to read me,
I want you to already know.
I don’t want you to think in 3-D,
Second-guessing how I ought to flow.
I want your way to be like my way,
Even though you’ve never met me –
Follow your gut, you’ll do okay,
That is, if you get me – really get me –
But you won’t, huh. Nobody will.
So read it however you like, I guess.
I mean, at least you read it still,
That’s something. I should worry less…
The Last of the Bards
Poet Laureates may think they’re minstrels as of old,
And the keepers of collective kinds of culture –
But the power of such poetry has long since faded cold,
Like the tides of sacred dance or idol sculpture.
The heart of our society has moved-on into music
And to movies, and to comics, and to memes –
This is our shared heritage – collectively we choose it,
And subconsciously it permeates our dreams.
The arts have work to do,
And when it’s done,
They must give way.
The world must make anew
Each hero son
To have his day.
And poems, once so true,
Are now unspun, no more to say.
So poetry is rarefied, like opera and heraldry –
Irrelevant to most, and barely missed.
It’s hived-off into enclaves, where its swallows public subsidy
Because a few elites and pseuds persist.
The people are intimidated, left to feel inadequate
For not relating to this ancient form –
But quickly, and quite rightly, shrug it off – so let’s not overstate
Its presence in the psyche of the norm.
From Troy, to Middle Earth, to Tatooine,
The stories sway –
They have to prove their worth,
To keep their sheen,
Or slip away.
And poems, long in dearth,
Are barely seen or heard today.
Rhyming Couplets 