Raw Poetry

sometimes I feel a sort of

secondhand embarrassment

when I see poetry trying

so profusely

to find rhyming profundity

awkwardly stepping around

imaginary stones

in the language road

cleverly cartwheeling

down the path to

devise a discernible pattern

so much twirling about

that we end up

totally lost in the weeds

devouring a word soup and salad

(hold the baguette)

my eyes squint

hoping to catch sight

of the point somewhere

it zips past my face like a fruit fly

nose tickling, nostrils flaring

while the poem's ego sits in its own lap

a fluffy white cat being stroked

slowly bringing a pinky

to the corner of its mouth

Dr. Evil style

(billion and million rhyme, right?)

some people use poems like chains

choking to death on quatrains

constrained by boxes of rules

for every single syllable

it's cruel

and furthermore,

overly flowery language

constricted by proper

grammar and punctuation vines

seems to defeat the purpose of poetry

to me

you see,

I prefer to use my words

like they're Yahtzee dice

scooped up,

shaken, stirred,

scrambled on the dining room table

one on the floor

and hope that maybe, just maybe

I'll catch my lucky break this time

maybe it was all chance

my random thoughts arranged

in just the right way

to make a middle aged man in glasses

scratch his head and go, "huh."

maybe it's just

a statistical inevitability

that one day

one poem I write

might strike a chord

(even if it's raw)