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Using form: George Simmers, ‘A Triumphal Ode’

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decorative

A TRIUMPHAL ODE
Humbly Inſcribed to the Occaſion of The moſt Joyous and Auspicious ARRIVAL of
ANDREW MOUNTBATTEN-WINDSOR, Eſq.
at His Majeſty’s PRISON of BRIXTON
Composed with all due Solemnity & Pomp
and designed to be ſet to Muſick by
the late Great GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL

All the echoing prison round
Let great tumultuous welcome sound.
Let each incarcerated fellow
Loud and jubilantly bellow.
Let there be no dereliction;
Convicts, show your true conviction
In strong words and in minatory songs
That he is now where he belongs.

Let there be all kinds of musical cacophonies
Let there be mighty rattling of warders’ keys
Let there be synchronised humming of drug-transporting drones
Let them sound, the unharmonious ringtones of contraband phones
Let noise be noise in our unanimous celebration
Of this long-overdue incarceration.

He comes! Let every crooked eye be fixed on
The arrival of Mr Mountbatten-Windsor at Brixton.
He who for so long has sinned with impunity
Let him now be welcomed into the criminal community.
Here with the weaklings and the wicked,
Here with the druggie and the dickhead,
Here among the child molesters,
The frauds and Just Stop Oil protestors
The terrorists, the traitors
And the far-right agitators,
The ponces and the nonces, plus the mugger and the blagger,
The cracksman with a jemmy and the psycho with a dagger,
All citizens of this prison world, the scum of every slum
Rejoice and raise a happy voice that he at last is come
He, born second in line to the throne, now come to live
In the world where the snout baron rules, and the man with the shiv

Let him, the ex-royal, the ex-envoy for trade
Come here among his kindred, to the future he has made.

*****

George Simmers writes: “The Epstein revelations have muddied the reputations of many eminent men, and nobody looks grubbier than Mr Mountbatten-Windsor. The distasteful stories and compromising photographs have told their story. The only way is down. This Ode looks forward to celebrating an event that the British public is anticipating eagerly.

“It is doubtful whether prosecutions will follow for many of Mr Epstein’s guests. Their morals may be questionable and their reputations have suffered, but illegality can be hard to prove – it was Mr Epstein himself who did all the luring and procuring. But Mr Mountbatten-Windsor, because of his distinguished family connections, was lured not only with massages, but also with financial inducements. At the time when he was an official trade envoy of the British government, he had access to financial information (such as details of a forthcoming budget) that could have been very valuable to an investor like Mr Epstein. Documents in the voluminous Epstein archive suggest that such information was indeed shared. Mr M-W could therefore be prosecuted for the very serious offence of misconduct in a public office. This ode looks forward to the time when this foolish man is made to answer for his misdeeds.

“Such are the delays that have slowed the British court system since the hiatus of the Covid years, that legal experts estimate that Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s case is unlikely to reach a court until 2030. It’s a long time to wait, but in the final eventuality, I hope that this ceremonial ode will be sung joyously by a massed choir. I imagine it set to music by that eminent composer George Frideric Handel, who was very good at such things. To those who object that Mr Handel is dead, I would point out that there is a psychic in America who has made productive contact with the shade of Mozart. Several peasant concerti have apparently resulted. I’m sure the lady could persuade Mr. Handel’s ghost, too, to come up with the goods. I imagine something a bit like the Hallelujah Chorus, but maybe even more jubilant.”

‘A Triumphal Ode’ was first published in Snakeskin.

George Simmers used to be a teacher; when he retired he then amused himself by researching a Ph.D. on the prose literature of the Great War. He now spends his time pottering about, walking his dog and writing a fair bit of verse. He is currently obsessed by the poetry of Catullus, and has self-published a slim volume of translations. He has edited Snakeskin since 1995. It is probably the oldest-established poetry zine on the Internet. His work appears in several Potcake Chapbooks, and his most recent general collection is ‘Old and Bookish‘. Another may be on the way.

RHL, ‘Fifty Year Argument: Old Fool, Young Twit’

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1. To Myself in Fifty Years Time

Old fool!  You really think yourself the same
As I who write to you, aged 22?
Ha!  All we’ve got in common is my name:
I’ll wear it out, throw it away,
You’ll pick it up some other day….
        But who are you?

My life’s before me; can you say the same?
I choose its how and why and when and who.
I’ll choose the rules by which we play the game;
I may choose wrong, it’s not denied,
But by my choice you must abide….
        What choice have you?

If, bored, I think one day to see the world
I pack that day and fly out on the next.
My choice to wander, or to sit home-curled;
Each place has friends, good fun, good food,
But you sit toothless, silent, rude….
        And undersexed!

Cares and regrets of loss can go to hell:
You sort them out with Reason’s time-worn tool.
Today’s superb; tomorrow looks as well:
The word “tomorrow” is a thrill,
I’ll make of mine just what I will….
        What’s yours, old fool?

2. Reply to Myself – Fifty Years Later

Young twit! You really think we’re not the same?
That means you’re too young to extrapolate.
You’re the mere seed of what I since became:
    a husband, father, game creator,
    global skills facilitator…
        well paid; thought great!

You claimed to thrive, renting some garbage heap;
you travelled: hitchhiked, froze, thought life’s a bitch,
and ate whatever you could find that’s cheap;
    I travel too, and I eat well,
    and choose to sleep in a hotel…
        not in a ditch!

Your search for happiness was excellent;
you lived with several countries, faiths and girls,
though little lasted from those years you spent;
    for when you can’t tell love from lust
    and never work out who to trust…
        of course life whirls!

Your limited perspective proved a sham.
Your rude invective, though a load of shit,
helped fertilise my growth to what I am.
        My resumé –kids raised, loves gained,
        a business built –shows much attained…
            what’s yours, young twit?

*****

I was proud of the form I created when I wrote the first bratty poem, with both the rhyme scheme (abaccb) and the lines getting shorter (3 pentameter, 2 tetrameter, and a dimeter) contributing to the effect of each stanza ending with a punchline. But after I wrote that first poem to my future self at age 22, I was nagged by the need to respond as I got older; and I was never able to produce anything I liked. Finally, a full 50 years later, I produced the 72-year-old’s point by point rebuttal in the same form as the original. The original took a couple of hours over two days to write; the response was done in a couple of hours in one day.

The argument was first published in Snakeskin.

The illustration is one of Tenniel’s for Lewis Carroll’s “You are old, Father William“. And, yes, I still do headstands.

Using form: Brian Brodeur, ‘Not Versed in Country Things’

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      Replacing slate with bitumen,
crumbling shiplap with new tongue-and-groove, 
      we sweat the same as those other men
            who raised this crooked barn  
and who, we’d like to think, would still approve.      

      Like elders speaking in low tones
to kids who ask about the recent dead, 
      the ancient headers creak hoarse groans.
            In wind, the rafters strain   
as thunder grumbles closer overhead. 

      We marvel at the wonky wall  
wedged into the hill so horses, goats or cows 
      could drift from pasture back to stall
            without the farmer’s prod—
or we assume, shrugging at flails and ploughs.  

      Planks termites haven’t gnawed to sand
retain old hammer dents and kerfs from saws. 
      Who knows what those who toiled by hand
            would make of, or make with, 
our front-end loaders and our zoning laws. 

      As if anticipating us, 
they improvised the hipless gambrel’s slant
      and rigged the struts for each bowed truss
            so steep it shouldn’t stand   
(we’ve tried to realign them but we can’t).   

      We yank square iron nails from boards
and trade farm implements for farm décor,
      clearing eaves of nesting birds
            to patch roof gaps in rain.   
Where no door’s hung for years, we hang a door. 

Brian Brodeur writes: “I grew up around a lot of sawdust—my father built houses. The sounds, sights, smells, and tactile sensations of construction still attract me, especially the language of construction sites. Like writing in meter and rhyme, architectural restoration links present desires with past needs, establishing a line of communion between the living and dead. I tried to embody this notion in “Not Versed in Country Things”—explicitly in the poem’s title, which is a direct response to Frost’s “The Need of Being Versed in Country Things,” that famous barn burner.”        

The poem won second place in 2025 First Things Poetry Prize.

Brian Brodeur is the author of four poetry books, most recently Some Problems with Autobiography (2023), which won the 2022 New Criterion Poetry Prize. Recent poems and literary criticism appear in The Hopkins Review, The Hudson Review, and Pushcart Prize XLIX (2025). Brian teaches creative writing and American literature at Indiana University East. He lives with his wife and daughter in the Whitewater River Valley.

Photo; “Autumn Country Barn” by ForestWander.com is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Using form: Odd poem: British Railways toilet sign

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Passengers will please refrain
from flushing toilets while the train
is standing in the station.

*****

It is my (perhaps flawed) understanding that this particular wording originated in the UK. Signs instructing passengers to refrain from flushing toilets while at a station were widely used in the UK throughout the mid-20th century, specifically from the nationalization of British Railways in 1948 through the 1960s. The signs were a standard fixture in passenger carriages, typically made of cast iron or enamel for durability. The signs began to disappear as British Rail modernized its signage in 1965, and gradually replaced older rolling stock with newer models. 

At the time these signs were posted, British trains utilized a “hopper” or “direct discharge” system: toilets consisted of a simple chute or a water-flushed system that emptied human waste directly onto the railway tracks. Because waste dropped straight down, flushing while stationary at a station would deposit raw sewage directly onto the platform-side tracks, creating severe hygiene and odor issues for passengers and staff. Although the first retention tanks (which hold waste for later disposal) were introduced in 1981, the transition away from “hopper” toilets was slow. As recently as 2018, approximately 10% of British train carriages still discharged waste onto tracks, with the practice only largely being eliminated by 2023 after significant government and industry pressure. 

It is not known which railway employee successfully created and implemented the phrasing—”Passengers will please refrain from flushing toilets while the train is standing in the station”. Perhaps they did it surreptitiously, anonymously; but the catchy rhythm and rhyme became so ubiquitous that it was set to the tune of Dvořák’s Humoresque No. 7 and became a popular piece of cultural folklore in both the UK and US.

Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas and Yale law professor Thurman Arnold take full credit for the “Bawdy Song.” In his autobiography, Go East, Young Man (pp. 171–72), Douglas notes, “Thurman and I got the idea of putting these memorable words to music, and Thurman quickly came up with the musical refrain from Humoresque.” Here is an incomplete version of that work:

“Passengers will please refrain
From flushing toilets while the train
Is in the station. Darling, I love you!
We encourage constipation
While the train is in the station
Moonlight always makes me think of you.
If the woman’s room be taken,
Never feel the least forsaken,
Never show a sign of sad defeat.
Try the men’s room in the hall,
And if some man has had the call,
He’ll courteously relinquish you his seat.
If these efforts all are vain,
Then simply break a window pane-
This novel method used by very few.
We go strolling through the park
Goosing statues in the dark,
If Sherman’s horse can take it, why can’t you?”

Using form: RHL, ‘Formal vs Free’

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Look: formal verse can be china for tea,
a golden goblet, a mug made of clay.
Free verse is putting mouth to stream to drink.
Yes, you could cup your hands… but do you think
museums want to buy that to display
your “memorable skill”, your “artistry”?

*****

‘Formal vs Free’ is published in the current ‘Blue Unicorn‘, in a section loaded, as often, with verse about verse.

Photo: “Red-figured Greek Red-Figure Kantharos (Drinking Vessels) with Female Heads 320-310 BCE Terracotta” by mharrsch is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Using form: Tritina: Nicole Caruso Garcia, ‘Love Poem in Winter, with Blackout Shades’

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Beginning with a line by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

My husband is a pale blur. The dark
turns grainy as the blue hour tints our bedroom,
my glasses somewhere near the nightstand’s edge.

He could almost be U2’s guitarist, Edge:
goatee, pale arms, black T-shirt, trademark dark
wool skull cap. Me: his groupie. His hotel room.

Distortion fades. Before he leaves the room,
I feel a toe-squeeze, hear an air-kiss: edge
of day, his way of sugaring the dark,

our portrait in the darkroom of a marriage.

*****

Nicole Caruso Garcia writes: “The inspiration for the tritina ‘Love Poem in Winter with Blackout Shades‘ came from a workshop led by Matt. W. Miller at the 2022 Poetry by the Sea Conference. He had us select one line from among a dozen or so poems by other poets, then use the line use as a springboard and incorporate it somewhere in a new poem of our own. My poem’s first sentence is a line from the middle of Aimee Nezhukamatathil’s ‘I Could Be a Whale Shark‘.” 

‘Love Poem in Winter with Blackout Shades‘ was first published in Crab Orchard Review.

Nicole Caruso Garcia’s full-length debut OXBLOOD (Able Muse Press) received the International Book Award for narrative poetry. Her work appears in Crab Orchard Review, Light, Mezzo Cammin, ONE ART, Plume, Rattle, RHINO, and elsewhere. Her poetry has received the Willow Review Award and won a 2021 Best New Poets honor. She is an associate poetry editor at Able Muse and served as an executive board member at Poetry by the Sea, an annual poetry conference in Madison, CT. Visit her at nicolecarusogarcia.com.

Photo: “29/05/2009 (Day 3.149) – We Are Sane” by Kaptain Kobold is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Using form: Iambic trimeter: Susan McLean, ‘Danse Macabre’

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The dancers, taut as bows,
burn in their joyous fire.
They whirl, entwine, and pose
in friezes of desire.

No skeletons appear
to shock the celebration.
The dancers, bowing, hear
a rapturous ovation.

Outside, the wind blows colder.
Although she’d rather linger,
she senses on her shoulder
the tap of a light finger.

And, though she came alone
and doesn’t need a ride,
a shadow, thin as bone,
attends her, stride for stride,

then leaves her, still denied.
But the end is not in doubt.
The skeleton inside
eventually wants out.

*****

Susan McLean writes: “I wrote this poem after attending a performance of Ailey II, the junior corps of dancers in the company founded by Alvin Ailey. It was on a cold night in autumn around Halloween, and even though there was nothing sinister about the dances I witnessed, I was reminded of the medieval Dance of Death, in which skeletons appear to people in the midst of their daily routine to summon them away to death. One of the most memorable images of that theme occurs at the end of Ingmar Bergman’s film The Seventh Seal, and I have seen it portrayed also on the wooden bridge in Lucerne in Switzerland. The poem is written in three-beat lines of iambic trimeter, which reminded me of a stately waltz.”

‘Danse Macabre’ originally appeared in THINK Magazine.

Susan McLean has two books of poetry, The Best Disguise and The Whetstone Misses the Knife, and one book of translations of Martial, Selected Epigrams. Her poems have appeared in Light, Lighten Up Online, Measure, Able Muse, and elsewhere. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa.
https://www.pw.org/content/susan_mclean

“la danse macabre” by a magic monkey! is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Using form: Basic Me: Nicole Caruso Garcia, ‘Po-Biz Ars Poetica’

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Form is a slippery seed to be grasped.
Free verse is form with its bra hook unclasped.
Blocked is me chewing my fanciest pens.
Pun is a test of my spouse and my friends.
Drunk is the poet who’s making a pass.
Prize is a unicorn chased by an ass.
Tome is Uranus-sized ego unbound.
Deep is the grave of my darlings I’ve drowned.
Rhyme is the hill where I’m willing to die.
Meh is the mic hog who sounds like AI.
Crit is a cig from a firing squad.
Light is the thirstiest verse. Please applaud.

*****

Nicole Caruso Garcia writes: “‘Po-Biz Ars Poetica‘ came about after I stumbled upon a metrical form Mary Meriam invented called the “Basic Me.” (I will include the link to its “rules” here.) Although Meriam says, “Basically, it means ‘what are your words and how would you define them?,” here I ascribed each trait to “po-biz” rather than to myself.”

‘Po-Biz Ars Poetica‘ was first published in the Winter/Spring 2025 issue of Light, where Nicole Caruso Garcia is the Featured Poet.

Nicole Caruso Garcia’s full-length debut OXBLOOD (Able Muse Press) received the International Book Award for narrative poetry. Her work appears in Crab Orchard Review, Light, Mezzo Cammin, ONE ART, Plume, Rattle, RHINO, and elsewhere. Her poetry has received the Willow Review Award and won a 2021 Best New Poets honor. She is an associate poetry editor at Able Muse and served as an executive board member at Poetry by the Sea, an annual poetry conference in Madison, CT. Visit her at nicolecarusogarcia.com.

Photo: “ENSACT Conference Social Action in Europe, Dubrovnik 2009” by sharon.schneider is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Using form: Quatern: Susan McLean, ‘Cropped’

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He doesn’t care for flowers or for fruit,
so don’t implore him not to clip or prune
the fig trees and camellias. His pursuit
of geometric form makes him immune

to luscious tastes and beauties others crave.
He doesn’t care for flowers or for fruit,
so once the buds appear, don’t try to save
them from his trimmer. All your pleas are moot.

He holds a tidy yard in high repute,
a verdant symbol of his mastery.
He doesn’t care for flowers or for fruit,
but takes some pleasure in your misery

as he destroys what you had hoped to see.
His need to have control is absolute,
and you can’t argue with machinery.
He doesn’t care for flowers or for fruit.

*****

Susan McLean writes: “This poem started with my desire to write a quatern, a form that I had encountered in Chad Abushanab’s workshop on rare poetic forms at the Poetry by the Sea conference in 2024. A quatern is four quatrains long, and the first line of stanza one becomes the second line of stanza two, and so on. As for the poem’s content, it grew out of a dispute about gardening practices with someone I know well. I was unable to convince him to change his ways. I should add that his ascribed motives are all conjectural on my part, not based on anything he said. But poets don’t really lose an argument; they just take the opportunity to restate it as a poem. This poem first appeared in the August 2025 issue of Snakeskin.”

Susan McLean has two books of poetry, The Best Disguise and The Whetstone Misses the Knife, and one book of translations of Martial, Selected Epigrams. Her poems have appeared in Light, Lighten Up Online, Measure, Able Muse, and elsewhere. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa.
https://www.pw.org/content/susan_mclean

Photo: Snakeskin

Ekphrastic SF poem: Simon MacCulloch, ‘Rocket Ride’

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A dinosaur straddles a rocket
And whether the pilot within
Was trying to launch it or dock it
To finish a trip or begin,
It looks like a fight that the dinosaur might
By weight and ferocity win.

But how did it mount there? Its wings
Though bat-like are really too small
To soar to the perch where it clings
Indeed, to get airborne at all
It better hold tight as the rocket takes flight
For if it slips off it will fall.

The monster can only have boarded
The spaceship when close to the ground
(Its huge-muscled hind legs afforded
The strength for a crouch and a bound)
And as it gains height in the star-speckled night
It will squat, legs and tail firmly wound.

A rodeo cowboy! Each buck
Of boosters a challenge to greet!
A contest of power, skill, luck
To see if a lizard can beat
This beast that takes fright at the terrible sight
Of a dragon that thinks it’s in heat.

For that is the heart of the matter:
This brute who bears down from above
Will scrabble and buffet and batter
Then, spent, wrap as close as a glove
With licks to invite its cold mate to requite
Its misallied dinosaur love.

*****

Simon MacCulloch writes: “Rocket Ride was inspired by Peter Andrew Jones’s book cover painting for The Second Experiment (Granada Books, 1975); the poem was first published in Aphelion.”

Simon MacCulloch lives in London and contributes poetry to a variety of print and online publications, including Reach Poetry, View from Atlantis, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, Spectral Realms, Black Petals and others.

Image © Peter Andrew Jones 1975