I am often asked this question in comments, private notes and emails.

The short answer is: I don’t know.

I don’t know if there is an answer or if I’m the man to even try.

First, there are probably as many ways to write poetry as there are poets. I can’t imagine any one size fits all template. That is too horrible to contemplate.

Second, my method is actually a non-method. I will describe it, but I doubt it will be useful or transferable.

I have been a fanatical reader all my life. I still am. I probably read an average of three books per week. This has been going on for decades.

I have been reading poetry seriously for perhaps 43 years, including being taught how to read closely by some brilliant professors as an undergraduate and graduate student.

This has deposited an enormous mishmash of poems, sentences, images, phrases and fragments in my brain. Add to that mishmash decades of reading across disciplines, especially history, philosophy, religion and novels. Imagine that mishmash slowly marinading and fermenting.

From that random accumulation, without provocation on my part, poems emerge. There is no order to this and not much effort. I just channel what shows up. I do some retouching, but little serious rewriting.

And there you have it: my non-method. It should be obvious why I doubt it will be of much help to anyone else.

I can give a bit of advice, but only based on my experience.

Love words. Love to learn them. Love to play with them. Delight in them.

Read as much poetry as you possibly can. I doubt anyone can become a poet without doing this.

Be patient. It takes a while for the marinade to work. I’m 65 and I only began writing seriously eight years ago.

Find your own method and your own voice. You’ll know when that voice is authentic.

And then, sing out.

Affluence drives the influence,
Brevity mistaken for clarity.
Conveniently concise in assured confluence,
Dependent on constant hilarity.

Engaged in a cult of personality,
Forced diction to subdue the masses.
Grotesquely shaped by a warped reality,
Hidden in plain sight of our fat *****.

Irony isn't noted, only subdued and ignored,
Jaded eyes with headlights all dimmed.
Knowledge is left for survivors to hoard,
Laying in the waste that's been already skimmed.

Might over right, the motto tonight,
No room for a shred of reason.
Oppose this with light, and fall out of sight
Privilege lost in the change of the season.

Question it all as it encloses you in,
Restrained by those who suppress the opposed.
Stricken by goals of absolvement of sins,
Temporary ends to a means they supposed.

Under our cloaks are a beacon of hope,
Values that lie in the morals we hold.
We believe unity is the method to cope,
Xenophobia leaves all involved cold.

Your turn to decide: time to run or hide?
Zealous feelings aside, all along for the ride!

Dilly dally ****
Ranieri has now gone.
Sacked by the Leicester board:
Watch them wield that deadly sword.

He won the league last year,
Then made Leicester disappear.
Should have been given a chance
To win the Relegation Dance.

Vardy grabs an away goal at Seville
Then next news the manager is nil.
It was a very nasty shock,
So early in the turning of the clock.

Ungrateful and disloyal too,
Those owners haven’t got a clue.
Hard-nosed business it may be,
Whatever happened to that word “We”?

They should have built a statue in Claudio’s name:
He’ll still be blessed with endless fame.
I’ll leave you with this sorry thought:
Football’s no longer a proper sport.

Paul Butters

my chest
is a balloon
filled with empty air
that is waiting
and waiting
to eventually burst
and i fear
the aftermath
of how much
i am feeling nothing
yet everything
all at once

Somewhere, amongst the debris
of cigarettes after ***,
chemicals to induce sleep,
I forgot what it means to love.

I forgot what it means to breathe,
to sit still, and just be.

Somewhere, beneath these hooded seams
of solitude and well-versed grief,
beats a heart less cynical,
less tamed by vague distraction.

My nervous ticks and bad habits,
line of best fit for a near-hit
of satisfaction:

This is not enough, I know.
This is not nearly enough
to cool the bray of life
that still rattles meaning in my bones.

I forgot what it means to love,
what separates a house from a home.

Somewhere beyond this thirst
for brand-new words
is a gratitude for all that has been.
Every cliché holds a truth.

Every sentiment, a cocoon,
that I should lie so still inside

until I am wholesome,
until I am new.

Secretions of compassions
Given unto those who feel not

love from those they need.

Who feel not their souls
which need be freed

Who feel not they could
Ever succeed.

Secretions of Love
Given to those
who are pure as a dove


But suffered like Christ.

The innocent, not yet taught
Of responsibility,
and Clarity
and control
of your mind.
The innocent who have been

Hung on the cross

Forced to suffer

for no apparent reason.

Many moons,
have passed over my headpiece,
as you leave me behind,
in moondust & ashes each night,

You collect on the bookshelves,
I keep here,
collecting on hearts with your light,
dusting my world with your beauty,
diminutives in bits of the white,

This is not the end of the journey,
 this a mere tiny part of the flight,
and I've not seen any more shiny,
or any star nearly as bright,

Though I am unable to see you now,
or touch your skin ever again,
or truly hear you with my ear,
I still miss you so my friend,

I know I cannot be near you now,
I cannot be where you are,
as you are but a twinkling light,
a brilliant & distant, star-

If it was not but for the moon dust,
my heart wouldn't,
be able to see you anymore either.

Ma Cherie © 2017

Flowers grow for fun and they grow for life
they grow in frozen ground, they survive in strife
Flowers smell so sweet you know
Like honey tastes on the tongue

Flowers remind of those that i used to know
Way back when I was young.