Crumbs

[Leanne]

I am a poet poets love.  They rave about
my fine command of meter and my subtle
hand at rhyming: not for me the chime of dove
and heavens up above, oh no! My line
will not be crammed with filler words; it’s so
enjambed that punctuation takes the place
of thes and ands and empty space.  Oh yes,
I write in light and grace, a poet’s poet, form
or free, the DNA of poetry.  I stamp my code
on open minds and on they go; I’m left behind,
a residue, perhaps a scum, no froth remaining,
just a drum that keeps the beat in murky holes. 
I lurk and beg, please cast your eye across
my page; alas, the spirit of the age
is not my own.  A poet’s love may bring me joy,
but poets love the dead too well; to spread,
we need the hoi polloi,  the snap and sharp
of instant sell. I fear my ticket’s set too low:
I cannot beat the status quo.  If poets
are to be my bread, I’ll take their crumbs. 
At least they’ve read.

[dukealien]

Intrigued by the levels of humor and sincerity here.  On first reading, stopped halfway through to start again from the beginning, thinking some clew as to a hidden alternate ("real?") line structure had been missed.  One could, perhaps, be contructed so as to place full rhymes at the end of each line, but they would be of unequal length and, anyway, they read more pleasantly and unexpectedly as internal rhymes.

As to the theme/story, it's The Story.  Can only be thankful to have come to poetry late in life, avoiding many years of such breadful dreadful frustration    .

[Leanne]

Cheers folks, thanks for taking a look

[Achebe]

loved the cleverness of

 .......it’s so
enjambed that punctuation takes the place
of thes and ands and empty space.  

and the right-words-in-the-right-place-ness of 

...poet’s love may bring me joy,
but poets love the dead too well; to spread,
we need the hoi polloi,  the snap and sharp
of instant sell...

thanks for posting

[next]

   "but poets love the dead too well"



   and, evidently, not wisely.

[Leanne]

Nope, we're not a clever breed despite what we tell ourselves.

[Leanne]

I'm trying to decide whether this is pure self-pity/ self-indulgence or worth working on.

[dukealien]

I'm trying to decide whether this is pure self-pity/ self-indulgence or worth working on.

Ummm... why can't it be both?  How does work spoil the essential purity (sorry if that came out as a serious question)?

[Leanne]

No, it's not work that would spoil anything (gosh, that sounds so emo, you should know me better than that!) -- what I meant to say is, is this nothing but self-indulgent tripe that will not be worth anything outside the initial moment and context, or is there anything worth working on to build it into something that might be worth reading a few years from now? Mostly just musing. I was pretty pissed off when I wrote this and it's a 2-minute scribble.

[just mercedes]

I think it contains a lot that's worth working further. It reminds me very much of the tone that Browning used in My Last Duchess. Just needs that final sting in the tail (tale).

[Leanne]

It does kind of trail (tail) off... I ran out of rant steam. That's what happens when I just read something that irritates me and write shit about it without actually having a destination in mind