Skip to main content

POEM WITH MOSTLY ONE RHYME SCHEME

 

POEM WITH MOSTLY ONE RHYME SCHEME

 

It came upon me like a midnight clear,

Nothing circumspect about abject fear

One year I’d been barely able to cobble together

Reasons for the forward trundle among mean peers

Now the twenty-twenty experience, total weird.

We’ve all been here, it’s that rare spectacular

You don’t need eyes to see, beyond veneer

I’d gone one better, though, felt no longer mere

Me or someone other, I’d just blinked out and over

Like the plunked phone in the canal, so far, so near

Flatter than the death rate fun park rollercoaster.

 

I’ve lost, not tattletale smell, but taste for career

Spiritual renewal or nada plus plus  – down, yes, doctor

But not like I’d ever known such arctic wastes before

There I was, all of a sudden framed in fur,

Goggled, with skidoo, top rifle, assisted by laser

Entirely prepped for any blizzard or ice-pick meteor

Come to stock-standstill even the sub-zero thought bizarre

As awestruck bears in their whites bowed at my feet, polar

And barking seals crowned me their king-conqueror

Of land drier colder farther lesser much leaner drear

Ever found by whatever strives to consider life dear.

 

NOVEMBER, 2020, LONDON

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".