I started a poem with a serious intent… <br />but who would ever guess the mess, and where that poem went? <br />I’d barely writ a line so fine, when the poem turned to me, <br />looked me in the eye and ear, and laughed demonic-lee, <br /> <br />pranced around me, singing, boo! you can’t catch me! <br />ain’t no rules nor grammar for the boldheart and the free! <br />race you round the chocabloc, poetic chairbound fatty! <br />you’re just like every pompous poet, thinking always that he <br /> <br />can control a poem with a life that’s its own! <br />tries to rhyme each couplet up, as if lines were circus clones… <br />tries to measure poems by some rules about their feet, or <br />wants to match my singing lines to some archaic meter… <br /> <br />’cause I’m a poem! <br />I’ve got my own life! <br />I want to dance around the streets, <br />I want to join a band! <br />I’ve got so much to tell you, <br />I want to lift your heart… <br />I want to make you weepy too, <br />If that’s the way I feel.. <br />I want to talk to children, <br />or to live in fantasy; <br />I want to feel much bolder <br />than this sillybilly world, <br />quick and slick and fancy-free; <br />and sail past time and space; <br />or wonder what it could be like <br />before the world began… <br />I want to shuffle words around, <br />like books upon a shelf; <br />I want to be all bold and free – <br />I want to be – myself! <br /> <br />So boo to all your metered rhymes, <br />you faded, jaded poet… <br />poems are the masters now… <br />it’s much more fun, <br />it’s just begun…and <br />it’s time for you to know it! …<br /><br />Michael Shepherd<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-poem-that-got-away/
