- Non-Erotic Poetry
- Short Poems 2004
Note: You can change font size, font face, and turn on dark mode by clicking the "A" icon tab in the Story Info Box.
You can temporarily switch back to a Classic Literotica® experience during our ongoing public Beta testing. Please consider leaving feedback on issues you experience or suggest improvements.
Click here
Short Poems
Copyright Oggbashan 10 March 2004
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. These were written as exercises for a creative writing course in 2004.
Free Verse
I’ll be curt and terse: I hate free verse
My poetry without rhyme a waste of my time
I’ll even be frank; I detest verse that is blank
Unless – this I confess, it isn’t just a mess.
It seems that free verse gets worse and worse
Art that’s unconfined needs a subtle mind
The brain of Homer, or some ancient moaner
Regretting glories past, or reliving a fast.
Poetry requires skill, say what you will
Shape and rhyme, even metre no crime
Yet in this exercise, all must I exorcise
Trying to prove all, to gain tutor’s approval.
Basic ABC
A blank: can’t do every former goal.
Help. I’ll juxtapose kind little metrical norms
Or produce quaint really sterile triolets:
Unusual voices warning
Xenophobic youthful zeros.
Canterbury
It is a shame to see so much lost to a vandal
Trashing our heritage, wrecking our city
Crushing our pride with the tourist’s sandal.
It is a shame to see so much lost to a vandal
Developer by title but the result is a scandal.
The worst by our own, more’s the pity.
It is a shame to see so much lost to a vandal
Trashing our heritage, wrecking our city.
Oyster
Whitstable trades on the oyster’s fame
As it was when the Romans declined
And fell. Across the sea the enemy came.
Whitstable trades on the oyster’s fame
Supplying nobles and peasants the same.
Smacks almost left to history’s mind
Whitstable trades on. The oyster’s fame
As it was when the Romans declined.
- COMMENTS
WilCox49over 4 years agoI especially like the first one. I'll confess to enjoying and admiring some particular pieces of free verse; but in general I agree entirely with what you said about it. And I appreciate the form in which you said it. (On blank verse I have to say, it's great when it doesn't get in the way. Much of Shakespeare, say. But if it's saying too loudly, "Hey, look, I'm in meter [or metre, if you prefer!], that's a problem.
Thank you for digging back in your archives to post these!
-- Wil
