Tag Archives: rhyme

Short NSFW poem: RHL, ‘The Fig Tree’

1 Reply

The fig leaf symbol’s one of History’s greats
As, inter alia,
It hides, discloses and exaggerates
Male genitalia.
The fruit itself suggests the female form —
Dripping with honey
The little hole breaks open, pink and warm…
The Bible’s funny.

First published in The Asses of Parnassus, this poem was republished in Better Than Starbucks, which earned a “Kudos on your brilliant ‘The Fig Tree'” from Melissa Balmain, editor of Light. And it has now been added by Michael R. Burch to my page in The HyperTexts. That’s a wonderful set of editorial acceptances – it makes me proud, and I have to erase my lingering suspicion that the poem would be thought too rude for publication. Now I rate the poem more highly, as being not just a personal favourite but also acceptable to a wider audience.

It sometimes feels that all I write is iambic pentameter. It is always reassuring when a poem presents itself with half the lines being something else, and the result is a lighter, less sonorous verse. The rhymes are good; the poem’s succinct and easy to memorise. I’m happy with it.

Photo: “Ripe Fig at Dawn” by zeevveez is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Short poem: RHL, ‘I Started Out Alone’

1 Reply

I started out alone,
No numbers and no words.
The people gave me food and clothes.
I loved the sun and birds.

And when I reach the end
Numbers and words all done,
Have to be fed and dressed again,
I’ll love the birds and sun.

*****

This is one of my favourite poems, for several reasons:
First, it extols the combination of curiosity, enjoyment and acceptance that I believe is appropriate for this thing called life.
Second, it is simple in expression: simple words, simple rhythm, in iambics with simple full and slant rhymes.
And third (and perhaps most importantly) it is easy to memorise: it has lodged itself in my brain without any effort or even intent on my part and, as this blog frequently claims, that is the essence of poetry.

‘I Started Out Alone’ was originally published in Bewildering Stories in 2019. More recently it was included in a batch of my poems that Michael R. Burch spotlighted in The Hypertexts for August 2024.

Photo: “Baby face” by matsuyuki is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Weekend read: Tom Vaughan, ‘Rhyme-Crime’

4 Replies

Does rhyme matter –
    however occasional?

It used to be
    considered vocational

a must for verse’s
    inspirational

impact, even
    educational –

but these days, it’s a
    generational

sign your stuff’s just
    recreational.

*****

Tom Vaughan writes: “For me, rhyme is not just a technical trick to help make poetry memorable. I think the world rhymes in odd ways. I also believe time rhymes, across the centuries but also in our short individual lives, sometimes in irony, but more often – if we listen hard enough to hear it – to point the way to a deeper level of challenge and reflection.”

Editor: I had been planning a rant on the essence of poetry being all the tricks that make it memorisable word-for-word: rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, assonance, etc; and on the fact that the bits of poems an adult remembers are invariably rhymed; and on poetry’s links to dance and song and the prenatal heartbeat. But Tom Vaughan introduces a whole new layer of value of rhyme, obliquely in his poem, incompletely in his comment. There are things to meditate on here.

Tom Vaughan is not the real name of a poet whose previous publications include a novel and three poetry pamphlets (A Sampler, 2010, and Envoy, 2013, both published by HappenStance; and Just a Minute, 2024, from Cyberwit). His poems have been published in a range of poetry magazines, including several of the Potcake Chapbooks and frequently in Snakeskin.
He currently lives in Brittany.
https://tomvaughan.website

Photo: “Sometimes, I like going back into #poetry and pretending like I am still in college. #johnkeats #bookstagram #annotations #reading #books” by alis.smith is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Light verse: Melissa Balmain, ‘Lament’

Leave a reply

Mama never horsewhipped me
or shoved things up my fanny.
She wasn’t hooked on PCP
and didn’t bump off Granny.
Daddy never climbed in bed
to open my pyjamas.
He read me Charlotte’s Web instead;
the bed he shared was Mama’s.
In college, I did not turn tricks
or date warped literati.
I haven’t starved myself to sticks,
joined cults, or loved John Gotti.
The guy I married doesn’t drink,
or French-kiss other fellers.
It really makes me sad to think
I’ll never write best sellers.

*****

From Walking in on People © Melissa Balmain, 2014. Used by permission of Able Muse Press.

Melissa Balmain writes: “This is the first poem I ever published outside of a school journal–in Light, then known as Light Quarterly. Thanks in no small part to the encouragement of Founding Editor John Mella, I never looked back.”

Melissa Balmain’s third poetry collection, Satan Talks to His Therapist, is available from Paul Dry Books (and from all the usual retail empires). Balmain is the editor-in-chief of Light, America’s longest-running journal of light verse, and has been a member of the University of Rochester’s English Department since 2010.

Photo: “Sad child” by Lejon2008 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

RHL, ‘The Sun is Always Setting’

Leave a reply

The sun is always setting, always setting on your day;
you sense the dark approaching, wish that it would stay away.
Do you want a life unchanging? Wish to still be a newborn?
Don’t you know life’s not a rosebud, but has root and leaf and thorn?

The sun is always setting and the black drapes are unfurled;
but notice that the sun sets on your world, not on the world:
it’s rolling into brightness in another’s happy land,
and the dark is evanescent and the brightening is grand.

The sun is always setting on the dinosaurs, but birds
are flocking into being, as are Serengeti herds;
and the sun that lights humanity? Of course it’s going to set,
and elsewhere light new tales of which we’ll just be a vignette.

The sun is always setting, but that view is just your choice;
I say the world is turning and evolving; I rejoice.

*****

Sometimes I’m told that my poetry is too bleak. But I think that’s only so if you want everything to stay as it is now. If, on the other hand, you expect change, and that change will ultimately provide more benefit than loss to the universe as a whole, then <shrug>… so it goes.

This poem has 14 lines but is hardly a sonnet. It was recently published in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal. Thanks, David Stephenson!

Photo: “Sunset Sadness” by BaboMike is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Casual form: Lisa Marshall, ‘Lust’

Leave a reply

Under the moonlight’s magical hold
Lust prowls like a wolf, hungry and bold

Slinking by with a wink of the eye
Slowly drawing me in on the sly

Into temptation’s cunning allure
Tainting even the purest of pure

Whispered confessions into the wind
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned

*****

Editor’s comments: I’m classifying these lines as ‘casual form’: the meter is undisciplined by classical standards, but the beat is clear and the rhymes are straightforward. The verse is as natural to English as nursery rhymes, noted for their ease of memorisation without being classically regular. Look at the varying numbers of syllable per foot in the four lines of ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’, for example. English speech is very forgiving regarding unstressed syllables, while still maintaining a rhythmic flow – as we know from rap. By that standard, adherence to beat and structured rhyme is adherence to form.

Lisa Marshall is a poet and author who resides in beautiful Dartmouth, Nova Scotia – also known as the City of Lakes.  She is the author of Black Olive: A Novel and Poetry for the Feminist’s Soul, both of which are available on Amazon Kindle. 
Read more at Not Another Nice Girl Blog.

Photo: from Lisa Marshall’s blog.

J.D.Smith, ‘Proposal’

1 Reply

Resign yourself, my heart’s delight,
To me before a better offer
Comes along with hair and height,
A sea-deep chest, a bulging coffer.

Don’t wait for him: if love’s a song,
I am the toad’s primeval croak.
If love’s a wheel, then I belong
Among its rusty, broken spokes.

If I mean nothing in the world
To you, that nothing could be all,
A version of transcendence, curled
And primed to blossom from your soul.

Who else is equal to this test,
This cup of gall? You’ve had a sip–
In our shared life you’ll taste the rest.
Come join me on this sinking ship.

*****

J.D. Smith writes: “This poem explains, if nothing else, why I didn’t go into sales. It was not written for a specific person, but it does capture a time earlier in my adulthood when I was frustrated on all fronts. The poem also partakes of self-parody. If Philip Larkin had proposed in writing, it might have gone something like what I did.”

J.D. Smith has published six books of poetry, most recently the light verse collection Catalogs for Food Lovers, and he has received a Fellowship in Poetry from the United States National Endowment for the Arts. This poem is from The Killing Tree (Finishing Line Press, 2016). Smith’s first fiction collection, Transit, was published in December 2022. His other books include the essay collection Dowsing and Science. Smith works in Washington, DC, where he lives with his wife Paula Van Lare and their rescue animals.
X: @Smitroverse

Illustration: by Edward Lear for his poem ‘The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo’.

RHL, ‘Everyone’

2 Replies

Everyone’s naked under their clothes,
everyone’s bald under their hair;
hide if you like, everyone knows!
Everyone sees what you’re like under there.

Everyone’s meat under their skin,
everyone’s bones under their meat;
we know what your outside is hiding within:
hiding will always end in defeat.

So banish the words and censor the book,
draw little clothes on the cartoons for kids;
everyone knows where your dirty eyes look,
everyone sees that your life’s on the skids.

This poem was a response to the news out of Florida that elementary schools are being forced to draw clothing on cartoon characters in children’s books if the printed images show nakedness of either front or back. The right-wing nutcase group ‘Moms For Liberty’ is causing the trouble.
This link https://popular.info/p/pressed-by-moms-for-liberty-florida gives details and shows some of the results.
Incidentally, one co-founder of the Moms for Liberty group is Bridget Ziegler. Apparently she and her husband Christian Ziegler had sexual threesomes with another woman; and when Bridget backed out of a planned threesome event in October 2023, Christian went along anyway; the third party declined sex, saying she was in it more for Bridget; so Christian raped her. The woman then filed a complaint with the police.
Why is it that the hysterically over-moral types seem to be the ones causing most of the problems?

This poem was published in the March 2024 issue of Lighten Up Online (aka LUPO); thanks, Jerome Betts!

Photo: illustration from ‘No, David!‘, written and illustrated by David Shannon.

Parody: Brian Allgar, ‘If you can …’

2 Replies

If you can make her laugh, that’s half the battle,
Especially if she’s married to a bore;
If you can make her glad to be your chattel,
Yet treat her like a lady, not a whore;
If you can undo bra-straps single-handed
While murmuring enticements in her ear;
If you can make her think you’re being candid
When telling her just what she wants to hear;
If you, my friend, can easily persuade her
To sample things she’s never tried before,
Or if she sighs with pleasure when you’ve laid her,
And smiles as you sneak out by the back door;
If you can tolerate her endless prattle,
(And never tell her “Darling, get a life”),
Her gossip and her foolish tittle-tattle—
Then you’re the bastard who seduced my wife!

*****

Brian Allgar writes: “Written with a particularly amoral friend of mine in mind, although I am glad to say that the narrator is not me.”

Brian Allgar was born a mere 22 months before Adolf Hitler committed suicide, although no causal connection between the two events has ever been firmly established. Despite having lived in Paris since 1982, he remains immutably English. He started entering humorous competitions in 1967, but took a 35-year break, finally re-emerging in 2011 as a kind of Rip Van Winkle of the literary competition world. He also drinks malt whisky and writes music, which may explain his fondness for Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony.
He is the author of “The Ayterzedd: A Bestiary of (mostly) Alien Beings” and “An Answer from the Past, being the story of Rasselas and Figaro”, both available from Kelsay Books and Amazon.

Photo: “Making Her Laugh II” by kahala is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Richard Fleming, ‘Invisible’

1 Reply

It’s footwear that I recognise
not faces but that’s no surprise:
I don’t look up, they don’t look down
except occasionally to frown
then look away and hurry on
and moments later they are gone.
There’s city Oxfords, polished, black,
worn by the older, banking pack,
and Converse sneakers for the lads,
whose work is fabricating ads.
The women, they too, dress that way:
I rarely see high heels today.
A constant stream of passing feet
flows by me on this busy street
while I sprawl here, small in my shawl,
and ask, do I exist at all?

*****

Richard Fleming writes: “During my early life I wrote non-rhyming verse, having been conditioned to believe that rhyme and metre were old-fashioned and therefore to be avoided: the last thing a young person wants is to be thought of as old-fashioned.
I was also prejudiced against humorous verse: my enjoyment of it was something of a guilty secret as my contemporaries all wrote dark, navel-gazing, stream-of-consciousness nonsense.
During Covid lockdown I found myself with time to reevaluate these blinkered views and finally embraced my love of nonsense verse. I set myself a goal of writing a light-hearted rhyme a day for the duration of lockdown, to assuage boredom, but once I had established a routine, I just kept on writing a bit of rhyming verse each day.
That was more than a thousand days ago and the rhymes just keep rolling out, one per day on Facebook, often inspired by the quirky images I find online but frequently the verse bubbles up of its own accord and I have to seek a suitable accompanying image.
As you might image, I now have an embarrassment of poems that, like the mayfly, live for, at most, one day and are gone. There’s no obvious long-term home for them.”

Richard Fleming is an Irish-born poet (and humorist) currently living in Guernsey, a small island midway between Britain and France. His work has appeared in various magazines, most recently Snakeskin, Bewildering Stories, Lighten Up Online, the Taj Mahal Review and the Potcake Chapbook ‘Lost Love’, and has been broadcast on BBC radio. He has performed at several literary festivals and his latest collection of verse, Stone Witness, features the titular poem commissioned by the BBC for National Poetry Day. He writes in various genres and can be found at www.redhandwriter.blogspot.com or Facebook https://www.facebook.com/richard.fleming.92102564/

Photo: “2016 – Mexico – Puebla – Street Person” by Ted’s photos – For Me & You is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.