Your poems read as staggered prose;
the rhythm of the words escapes you.
One assumes, un-mused, you chose
a free-verse prison to run into.
You are modern. And it shows
in lack of structure, meter, beat.
Your emperor, set free of clothes
meanders on unsteady feet
exposed as naked, fending blows
from anarch subjects bored to tears
by cryptic, existential woes
and dreary imagery. One hears
within the verbiage you compose
a load of godless free-form tripe.
The lyrical ebb achieves new lows;
the scent is somewhat over-ripe…

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied.  It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

From The Complete Poems 1927-1979 by Elizabeth Bishop, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. Copyright © 1979, 1983 by Alice Helen Methfessel.

She has a shaved head
that reminds me of a
crooked-smile-ex;
that choked on cigarettes
and words too contrived,
painted in a negligence
for humanity and a
belief in uninformed
nothingness.

Her body curves like
backroads I've been lost in.
Skin as pale as an eggshell,
I'd imagine she'd shatter
under the olive robe
she calls a dress
and bounce under the
kickstep of organic flats.

Eventually she will become
too much of an idea, she will
evolve into a misogynistic
poem, and if I were
to imagine her naked,
guilt would flood our fleshly-
alcohol-stained-continents,
angry between every slur,
loving between the shadows
of phantoms I once knew.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

I travell’d among unknown men,
  In lands beyond the sea;
Nor, England! did I know till then
  What love I bore to thee.

’Tis past, that melancholy dream!
  Nor will I quit thy shore
A second time; for still I seem
  To love thee more and more.

Among thy mountains did I feel
  The joy of my desire;
And she I cherish’d turn’d her wheel
  Beside an English fire.

Thy mornings showed, thy nights conceal’d,
  The bowers where Lucy played;
And thine too is the last green field
  That Lucy’s eyes survey’d.

I didn't fall into disrepute
So much as occur there

                                    By Phil Roberts