Poetry

I don’t understand poetry.

I don’t understand it in any form.

That type of writing is not for me.

Whether it be in a sonnet, an ode,

               Or a Robert Frost poem.

 

I don’t get why some like poetry

It’s not a form that works for me.

Rules and structure, with meter and beat

Confuses the story one is trying to tell.

I throw up my hands thinking, “What the hell?”

And if  one writes in free blank verse

Then things for me come out a whole lot worse.

If you starve a poem of periods and a comma

I can’t tell the action from the drama.

 

If you write lines in iambic pentameter 

For me it does not really matter.

I like stories without the drumbeat.

I like stories without all that clatter.

 

I like stories when the plot is concrete

With sentences and paragraphs written real neat.

With words written to fill the whole page

With endings that are not confusingly weak.

 

Some of the poems try hard to engage,

Some using words forming shapes down the page.

 But some of them

       just,

          plain,

               simply,

                      stink.

       They are not worth

             the paper,

       the words

   the thoughts

or the ink.

 

There are some poems I like sometime,

Like this one I wrote

                    that is one of mine.

 

But instead of poems to make me think

I prefer stories where I can read and drink.