Poetry - the monster

Poetry!
That monster that seems to scare
We feared it at school, now it baffles our brains,
Yet we loved it when we were small!

It’s only words. Written in a different way
That adds extra meaning somehow.
But at school it’s destroyed.
Here there’s no time to play
With words, with rhyme, with meter, with time.
No fun with puns, no gleanings.
No meanings self discovered.
It becomes work, a chore, a pain, a nightmare, a bind.

Forget all the rules for a moment and write
A song that tells a story, or fights a battle or,
Tells of love or makes wrong a right
Or describes a peanut, or a sherbet lemon -
The smell, the taste, the feel, the sight.
Just play
With words:
Alliterate, similise, neologise;
Break the rules; make up new rules.
Read your words out loud and wonder
At the power of words.

That’s poetry.

Sue Fewster - 2009