What Makes a Poem?
by cricketjeff on October 28, 2018. © Jeff Green, All rights reserved
A poem is a web of words that fails to fill the lines,
It either rhymes or doesn’t rhyme, amongst some other signs.
With assonance and consonance, with hyperbole, or not.
It sometimes isn’t easy to discover what you’ve got.
A poem tells a story, paints a picture, frames a song,
Or simply plays around with words, no content can be wrong.
A lot of nonsense may be good, but good advice is too;
It often tells a pack of lies or shows you what is true.
A poem is perfection, when it’s penned the perfect way
But other verse is terrible and that sort’s not okay.
In Shakespeare’s or in Byron’s hands it lifts the human soul
Yet Limericks are just as good but have a lower goal.
A poem makes you laugh or cry, makes love seem more than real,
May try to tell you what to think and how you ought to feel.
Emotions in a furnace mark the summits of the art
The valleys and depressions fill with language torn apart.
A poem isn’t something that is easy to define
And all of yours are different to every one of mine.
The only thing that’s certain and which every poet knows
Is poetry goes down the page more rapidly than prose!
Author notes
I may fit in another stanza or two before judging
English