Bantering needs many, not one voice:
you need ‘response’ as well as ‘call’.
Or else it’s only masturbantering –
with no real intercourse at all.
*****
You make up a word, and then you have to use it… a short poem is one way to do it. This poem was first published in Rat’s Ass Review (as you might have guessed, if you know that no-holds-barred magazine). Thanks, Rick Bates!
Photo: “banter” by Andrew G Thomas is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
I’ve always been around, since before I can remember,
so it just would be so strange, if one day I should dismember,
and my body disappear, like a swallow in September…
Will there be no glowing coal? Of my life survive no ember?
*****
This short poem was published on a page of ‘Senior Moments’ in the current Lighten-Up Online. I like the rhythm (there’s a pause in the patter in the middle of each line) but the simile is bogus: unlike with swallow migration, dead people are unlikely to show up again the next spring…
Photo: “Swallows” by Marie Hale is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Form in Formless Times 