POETRY ABOUT POETRY
How to write a poem in stanzas
While suffering from ‘lockdownitus’
Ideas come in the shower, be they’re very terse.
Write down the first line of your ‘idea’ in verse.
Develop introduction with a theme perverse,
Writing two or three introductory verse.
Make them all very different and diverse.
Develop the ‘idea’ with meaning in reverse.
Make it important, the reader to submerse.
Write the poem’s end in a much lighter verse,
Stopping your dear reader from feeling adverse.
Stop what you are writing, before it gets worse
And never repeat the same word in a verse.
Now Sign it, date it, give it title perverse.
Hurrah!!!
Tis done before they take you away in the hearse!
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Jacb 25/03/2020
The Thinking Poets Dilemma!
Do I write what I think you want to hear,
Or what I think I think I want to say?
Do you read what it is that I write
Or what you think I thought I wanted to write?
Do you read what you want to read
Or what I wrote for you to read.
Do you read what you think I wrote
Or do we not communicate?
When I take notes I think I write what I heard you say
Or is it what I think you thought you wanted to say?
Is it what you thought I thought I wanted to hear
Or is it what I thought you thought I would think you thought?
Jacb Nov 2020
The Event
Preparation takes up eight days a week
And every new day requires a new tweak.
It is fairly easy to make a plan,
It is something else to make it happen.
The committee meeting has to be held,
taking you to drop off sanity's edge.
The participants are pants at helping,
Even when they offer and give a pledge.
The PAs can work with electronics
But don’t know which way the sound has to go.
Stewards have to “take Mum to hospital,
But if it helps can come out tomorrow.”
You will need more of that book for signing
But less of that book that you thought would sell.
Book signings have a long unruly queue,
So have a shop till in permanent view.
Then other things happen like so many chairs, chairs,
That move about the tent with a mind of their own.
Don’t mention the car park or coffee shop seating
Or rain on the tent roof and loud birds a tweeting
But despite all this, the effort is very rewarding.
The fascinating people that you meet inside the tent.
The smiles that you generate on happy people’s faces.
And best of all releasing the creativity bent.
Jacb 25/02/2020
This poem has got me into trouble. It came out of a period of reacting badly to the lockdown, and after I ordered to books of poetry, one by an Englishman and one by poets from all over the world, and I couldn't connect with them. I couldn't understand them or how the poetry was constructed. As someone who has never studied language or poetry and is trying to catch up later in life this came out of me. Sorry of it offends you it is not directed at you personally.
​
I Hate Poetry
I hate poetry, especially other people’s poetry.
It is so much effort to read and understand the subject
And to work out the writer’s style and their form, which blocks entry.
How did they get into a book? Who thought it was good?
Modern poetry – Just write a short paragraph in quick time,
Arrange it as short lines of similar but not equal length.
Do not worry where the full stop is. At the end of the line,
In the middle, but I’ve never seen one at the beginning
.The trouble for me is that when I try to read classic verse
The meter is exact and every single line or two rhymes.
It feels so contrived, work by people with too much time, or worse.
It makes me annoyed because it is so much better than mine.
I like my poetry. It allows me to think all my thoughts,
It allows me to express the result of an emotion.
As I am a man, my emotions are not to the fore,
And do not get expressed except though the pen or the keyboard.
I like to play with words, rhyme them and make them say what I want.
Make them nuance different ideas, take on meanings from the past.
To show off my etymological skills in my writing
Which prevents me from thinking of the important things in life.
Other’s poetry? It’s as bad as mine at rhyming metre,
Odd length lines, and punctuation. All full of slang and Latin.
Do they like mine? I’m not sure. Am I bothered? No not really.
I have expressed my thoughts from my heart and put it out there – Done.
Jacb Dec 2020
The Poet's Fear
I woke to the light from the gap of the curtain
It set me off thinking I cold emulate what I saw through the crack.
So I tentatively drew back the curtain to expose the view
Which was very inviting from my innocent point of view
But, as I looked from left to right and back again
I thought how like life where I came from it was
Some directions were very beautiful, but others
Had lifted the lid from the drain
It wasn’t simple and defined an established way to go
But was twisted and distorted and had grime in the path
And was attacked and threatened on each and every side
By those trying to pull it and distort it to their personal own.
jacb Jan 2020
The New Poet
Now I have decided a poet to become.
To spill out all my thoughts in clever rhyme and metre.
Decision made; more questions come than I had before.
Answers are elusive and shake me to the core.
Do I think it, do I write it, or do I read it out loud?
Do I contemplate and cogitate or throw it to the crowd?
Do I type it, do I write it or send it to the printer?
Do I file, or submit, or leave it to fade in the sun?
jacb Jan 2020