I Wish I Were a

I Wish I Were a Poet (a poem using poetry vocabulary)

I wish I were a poet.  I’d write poetry and songs

And epic tales of heroes saving lives and righting wrongs.

Incorporating rhythm in my words will be a feat.
I’ll use poetic measure which is just a fancy beat. 

If I am sad, composing elegies will set me free

I’ll use a metaphor of life or roads as simile.

Or sweet, completed beats which are internal rhymes, you see.

I’ll write a verse that’s tightly terse rehearsed diversity.

I’ll add alliteration and angelic Anaheim

As onomatopoeias buzz and hiss in metered time.

My words are built in couplets like the simplest pairs of codes.
It is perhaps the opposite of convoluted odes.

My style is much too orderly to add free verse upon it.

The stanzas are in tight control like Shakespeare in his sonnet.

This may not be a narrative, there is no story told

Or mock-heroic anecdote of mythic knights of old.

 It’s not a lyric poem though I have the urge to sing

It’s just some lines with some end rhymes and humor happening.

I ask you, “Why personify a wise old owl or turtle?”

Or tell tall tales of giant whales named Abigail or Myrtle?

I do not use pentameter, I am iambic-free

There’s no extended metaphor like “roads not taken”, see?

I did refrain from sweet refrains repeated constantly.

But imagery is fun for me and helps the reader see.

My rhymes are not approximate, they’re accurately woven.

I aim my words on target like a pistol or a blow-gun.

 The speech above and figures of were meant to share some fun.

It’s poetry, done merrily, so smile a while.  It’s done.

Ode to a Ginger (a Poem to a Person of Redhead Persuasion)

Back when my tresses hid my head,

And when my beard was copper red,

Oh never was I "Ginger" called

That name is used now that I'm bald.

A finer term that I prefer

A pigment-referential slur:

The condiment, fair "Cinnamon"

In apple pies, you shake it in.

But to be fair, both have their flair

Both tasty, tangy, debonair

In each one’s heart, doth evil dwell,

Used less in heaven than in hell 

So Ginger, face thy roots in gin,

And Cinnamon, renounce thy cin.

Ode to a Wagoneer

My truck’s a dinosaur of prey

A can I cannot throw away

A fallen rose I chose to keep.

My gentle, geriatric Jeep

My car’s a multi-colored thing

A flightless hawk with tarnished wing

Of forest green and rusty feathers

With seats of cracked and crinkled leather

She fills with fuel like camel humps

And makes me mournful at the pumps

She shakes within while standing still

Or grappling happily up a hill

Her muffler cannot calm the roar

We rumble on the rocky floor

Beware fair hybrids, when you see us.

Was that a speed bump? No, a Prius.

Limerick #1

He kept saying to me "Carpe diem!"

every time that I happened to see him.

So I took his advice,

seized the day once or twice.

Now my trial will begin in the P.M.

Limerick #2

When I'm asked what it's like to be hairless,

my response is "I just couldn't care less.

As a lover I'm matchless,

though my roof may be thatchless,

and my scalp just so happens to wear less."

Love and Physics

Like particles too small to find

Love lives in theories of the mind.

Love has a quantum tendency

On close inspection it may flee

Or in two spots at once may be.

Of just one fact you can be sure

Though undefined, Love will endure.

Love Will Survive

Oh, Love is Nature’s little trick

Your tongue gets slow.  Your heart beats quick.

The former logic of your brain

Transforms to something quite insane

You focus so obsessively

On beauty, flowers and a tree

And Love’s a process quite organic

It makes depressive then makes manic

That she’s the only one that he sees

Assures survival of the species.

Bounce Your Concerns Against the Sea

Do not swallow sadness like a bitter root.

Feel the pain and measure its degree.

When you have partaken of the tainted fruit

Pause a while. Do not condemn the tree.

 Hold your daily troubles firm against the sea.

Measure their dimensions far and deep.

“I am not successful as I want to be.”

 No, for that the ocean will not weep.

“Oh, my stomach grumbles.  I’ve no food to eat.”

No the ocean’s greater than that need.

But, “She doesn’t love me, heartache with each beat.”

That, an ocean’s bounty cannot feed.