! The Poem That Got Away Poem by Michael Shepherd

I started a poem with a serious intent…
but who would ever guess the mess, and where that poem went?
I’d barely writ a line so fine, when the poem turned to me,
looked me in the eye and ear, and laughed demonic-lee,

pranced around me, singing, boo! you can’t catch me!
ain’t no rules nor grammar for the boldheart and the free!
race you round the chocabloc, poetic chairbound fatty!
you’re just like every pompous poet, thinking always that he

can control a poem with a life that’s its own!
tries to rhyme each couplet up, as if lines were circus clones…
tries to measure poems by some rules about their feet, or
wants to match my singing lines to some archaic meter…

’cause I’m a poem!
I’ve got my own life!
I want to dance around the streets,
I want to join a band!
I’ve got so much to tell you,
I want to lift your heart…
I want to make you weepy too,
If that’s the way I feel..
I want to talk to children,
or to live in fantasy;
I want to feel much bolder
than this sillybilly world,
quick and slick and fancy-free;
and sail past time and space;
or wonder what it could be like
before the world began…
I want to shuffle words around,
like books upon a shelf;
I want to be all bold and free –
I want to be – myself!

So boo to all your metered rhymes,
you faded, jaded poet…
poems are the masters now…
it’s much more fun,
it’s just begun…and
it’s time for you to know it! …