Different Feathers?


Has free verse been freed from tradition?

Was the latter determined adverse?

Is different different than better?

Just what is the price of free verse?

 

Does free verse have better transmission?

Is tradition decidedly worse?

Is better better than different,

and will the twain ever converse?

 

Be Realio-Trulio

Sonnets ill-used,

erroneous meter,

perhaps a reader

will be confused

 

when it’s perused—

although by name

it may be the same.

If form is abused,

 

rhyming refused

(not really a rose),

it clearly shows

its poet accused.

 

Though enthused,

none are excused.

 

The Piper’s Sonnet

Although I write this sonnet silently,

clandestine, as it were, so none may see,

I wonder whether someday I’ll allow

its light to shine and break its silent vow.

 

So why express in secret on a page

the thoughts in which I currently engage?

It’s hard to say, although on August 3rd

no surreptitious sonnet is absurd.

 

By that, I mean that none would not suffice;

by writing one, at least, you pay the price

the Piper calls for on this special day

so that his tune won’t swoon each muse away.

 

To write or not? I’ll do it secretly.

For now, a covert action just for me.

 

I Come to Raze Your Ears, Not Praise Them!

I went to a poetry reading

with a follow-up open mic.

It’s the first time that I’d been to one—

didn’t know what they might like.

 

So, alrighty then,

I could listen without care,

since diversity of poetry

wasn’t what had brought me there.

 

We all heard the featured poet

reading from his new chapbook.

It’s the first time that I’d been to one

and I read the one I took.

 

Well, alrighty, then,

they could listen without care,

since diversity of poetry

wasn’t what had brought them there.

The second poem, “Be Realio-Trulio,” is a “minison,” a form established by The Minison Project (https://theminisonproject.com/): 14 lines, 14 letters per line, and a 14-letter title.   

The third, “The Piper’s Sonnet,” was written a month ago for Surreptitious Sonnet Day, August 3^rd.

The last, “I Come to Raze Your Ears, Not Praise Them!” was written to the tune of Ricky Nelson’s 1972 hit tune “Garden Party.”