More years ago than I care to count I flirted with poetry. I wanted to be a writer. I thought writers, like good epicureans, should sample everything. So I joined a poetry group.
I learned two things in that class. 1. I hate writing poetry. Really detest it. Hardest brain twister I’ve every sacrificed some cells to. 2. I hate poets. Even more than I hate writing poetry. Don’t get me wrong, there is poetry I love, but the poets that wrote it are all dead.
While writing these poems I was also watching a lot of Italian horror. You may seem some influence. I considered not putting these up here at all, but if you can’t mock yourself, you have no right mocking others. And I do love mocking others.
So read on if you dare. Comments are on. I can take it.
GODLIKE
Someone asked me, “why do you want to write?” at the same point in time as I was dabbling with poetry, so I tried to explain it through writing. This was the result. I should have just said “To get girls.”
MORTAL TABLET
Mortality is a common theme in the poems of naturalists, and romantics for that matter. But they alway seem to eschew facing it head on. I wrote this poem to annoy a goth poet in my group obsessed with romantic death.
ROMANTIC LOVE
While I am a true believer in true love, spending any amount of time with a poet in love (which I unfortunately did – she wasn’t in love with me, nor I with her, we just knew each other) that doesn’t have the writing chops to match her ardor can drive you to a poem like this one.
SONNET ON THE FATE OF MR. ‘POSSUM
An homage to Odes and ‘Possums. Snarky fun.
MAN FACTORY
My father worked really hard his entire life and died a few years after retirement. I wrote this before he died because it bothered me he had to work so hard for so little. It is the only poem I didn’t write as a joke, and so it is a bit heavy handed.