Poetry Break: "Free Verse!"
Charles Robert Leslie, Autolycus (1836)
A free, tasteful thief?
(Image from Wikipedia)
We haven't had one of these poetry breaks for a long time, but today's a good day because I'm feeling lazy, and poetry is meant for shiftless bohemians like me despite my having set sail from the marvelous coasts of Bohemia on a winter's day long ago, a tale that I ought one day tell.
Meanwhile, sing out with me the pomo-boho esthete's anarchic anthem to freedom:
Stand leeways when you sing this, for you need that comic margin of freedom, something that I myself needed back in the early 90s when I wrote this eccentrically drifting verse.Free Verse!Free it from ironic cages,
Interwoven webs of language,
Patterns binding through the ages,
Meter, accent, feet, and beat. Wedge
A way. Scheme rhyme's end. And break all
Mind-deformed maniacals like
Those who'd have the udder gall
To bilk a bitter tense-peed bike
As though it took of bovine ilk!
So stand a stanza on its head,
Cup a couplet on the ear, milk
All metaphoricals! 'Nuff said.
Yeah, yeah, I know. With great power comes great responsibility. There's always something to chain one down...
posted by Horace Jeffery Hodges @ 4:50 AM
14 comments
14 Comments:
"Tennis with the net down."
That's a frosty remark.
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
Ah! Whose words these are, I think you know.
Though one might think it rather queer,
Indeed I do -- the words appear;
with clarity, I see your fake,
this brightest evening of the year.
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
A lot of fun, this game has been,
Indeed, your latest made me grin.
But perhaps it's worn a little thin,
And so I think I'll pack it in.
Oh pack it in, then pack it out.
That's what this game is all about.
Let's call a tie -- there's been no rout.
We've proved we neither one's a lout.
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
And so the ball went to and fro,
As it did 'twixt Borg and McEnroe.
With every serve, we scored an ace,
And we did it with the net in place!
Time now to choose at forking path,
Where ways diverge in wood or grove,
Past apple-picking time, one hath
sun's golden apples for the rove.
With apologies to Borges, Frost, and Yeats...
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
Hodges' first match was gold.
And it was his hardest serve to hold.
And as set subsided to set,
The match sank my heart with sweat.
And when Malcolm went down that day.
I knew nothing gold can stay.
--lollabrats
Hodges' first match was gold.
And it had his hardest serves to hold.
As set subsided to set,
The match sank hearts with sweat.
And when Malcolm went down that day,
I knew nothing gold can stay.
--lollabrats
(I clicked on "publish your comment" when I meant to click on the "anonymous" radio button and before I had edited. Darn!)
Lollabrats, I can always delete something for you if you ever need.
Thanks for playing along.
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
It's rare to see a comment thread
Awakened once it's gone to bed.
But though it's been a long long time,
A reader's added one more rhyme!
Just when it seemed like "goodnight, nurse",
This thread has gone from bed to verse!
"Just when it seemed like "goodnight, nurse",
This thread has gone from bed to verse!"
--Malcolm Pollack
!!!
To Mr. Malcolm Pollack,
Who has to this thread come back,
I didn't mean to rouse you.
I happen to be reading
All of Hodge's poems, not heeding
Your observance of curfew.
So pardon and please return now
To your bed and could you somehow
Tell me if your nurse is ingenue?
--lollabrats
You guys can pillow-fight this one out . . .
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
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