Feeling lost, lost the poetry

I tried to rhyme a poem once,
​By gosh my rhyme, rhymed me,
I tried to rhyme a poem once,
The poem poem’d me.
I tried to find some syllables,
Who were willing to be silly fools,
And jump into iambic pools,
And swim amongst trochaic lulls.
I pressed them into da, da, da,
Caught them out with closed couplets,
Run them round the page again,
And shut them up with sudden stops.

I imagined them as more than words,
I took those noun ones, made them verbs,
I told them they were better for,
The greatness of their metaphors,
But they didn’t care, what for, what for?
These silly Goddamn metaphors,
They made my verse perverse and poor,
The ceiling meanings hit the floor,
Adverbs prescribed prosaic cures,
Thus, lost all form, when pushed in clause.

I’m not a metaphysical,
There’s better than the whimsical,
So I simplified to regular use,
That cut them down a peg or two!
Stay straight, aligned and structured words,
Don’t try to be more than you were,
I may have used you,
Changed your meaning,
But less of this bourgeois scheming!


Come back and stop my tongue from twisting,
Sit on my lap and give me listening,
I won’t try to mould you so you flow for me,
Making you into cryptic poetry.
I will delight in every up and down,
Every movement, every sound,
And when you’re finished
I’ll put a comma,
Because no full stop can block your power.

Tamara Stidwell (Spring, 2018)