Second Edit: Professor of Poetics

[tectak]

Professor of Poetics

he is just a memory now-
part of a cruel dream
forever far
yet always close

he would lecture
about the clumsiness
of clichés:
“Grey leaden sky
is meaningless,” he would say

he would talk
of how poems were like candy
so sweet sounding
in our mouths

he would also scare away
young poets
by dissecting their lines
like a mad surgeon
his plain pencil
a scalpel
most of his surgeries
unwanted

he never made steel
like my father
he never waited a table
like my mother
but he influenced me

he taught me
and prolonged my dream of poetics:
a cruel dream
forever far
yet always close

Hi vaga...sorry, richard,
 as you know I follow you with unconcealed interest because you conceptualise with abandon...you abandon punctuation, rhyme, meter...in fact, you poetry IS concept. Now, this is not entirely a bad thing BUT it takes you absolutely nowhere along the road to betterment. You will find a lot of support amongst those who read words like cornfalkes coming out of a packet and tell you it's a serial story. I could say carry on and go to bed happy BUT something tells me that you have had enough of the platitudinal praise for what is, after all, the outpouring of a thought stream that once was bottled up. So where is this going? Well, and I put this mildly, just for once try reading your work out loud...preferably to your milkman not your mother. You will note his response and be slightly embarrassed that you read it to him but you will also note that even YOU, the writer, may stumble now and then because you give absolutely no road signs along the way. No stops, no slow downs, no bends ahead...
I advocate punctuation...I like some poetry  without...I like some with. Skilled poets can indicate just how the piece should be read by subtle and selective word meaning, line length and unavoidably clear "intonation". I  just do not get the warm feeling that I should fom the skill in execution. Help me. Try punctuating to clarity...it is worth it.
As an enjoinder, prose is slowly taking over from rhyming poetry. This is, I believe, almost symptomatic of the times. Easy peasy, slap it down...except when YOU write you have something to write about. For the sake of discipline and improvement overall, just try it as an exercise.
Best,
tectak