What makes a good poem?
Is it the rhythm? The structure? The carefully placed similes like dog treats and the restricted use of rhetorical questions?
Oh.
If that's the case,
I think I failed the test.
Oh please! Don't leave! Let me try this again!
(A cough to clear the throat)
Ha-HEM.
When one writes iambic pentameter
Doth that make his good prose the worthier then?
...No?
If I write a witty couplet in a rhyme
Does that make this utter **** more worth your time?
Have I got the tempo right?
I need an exclamatory tone!
Rhyming feels better somehow
But it doesn't make trombone.
My jittery jilted stream-of-consciousness different-line-length punctuation-less word-***** onto a page-
Pause for breath-
Can never match the likes of Donne or Keats;
But I've bled my soul and fire onto this page
And surely, that is worth more than conceits?
This is my attempt at humour. Apologies. The title is a play on 'A Good Friday, 1613, riding Westward', a poem by John Donne, who I was studying at the time. This was prompted by reading all the great poets and realising that, technically, I will never be as 'good' as them. But I like to think that art isn't quantifiable, and that so long as you write with truth and emotion, you'll create something beautiful.