When I decided to write my first poem, I thought back to the days,
when we were studying poetry and the teacher would amaze,
she'd make me write down words and things, I'd be chasing praise.
But looking back at my book now, I know what I should do,
and so here follows my glossary of things I'll write for you:

I have - Alliteration, Antagonist, Allegory and Anapest.
Characterisation, Complication, Convention and Connotation.
Elegy, Elision, Epigram and Exposition.
Free verse, Falling action, Falling meter and also Fiction.
Literal language, Imagery, Lyric poem and Irony.
Rising action, Resolution, Rising meter with Recognition.

Acatalectic, Anacreontic, Amphimacer and Amphibrachic.
Cliché, Common Measure, Couplets and Catalectic.
Deconstruction, Dispondee, Dialect Verse with a Dictionary.
Iambic Meter, Incantation, Impromptu with Inspiration.
Laureates and Limericks, Light Verse poems and Linguistics.
Metaphors, Mock-Heroics, Middle English and Movement Poets.

Oh gosh that seems a little worse, than I had it made to be,
I was expecting just to write a poem 'bout my cat and me.
I guess it's harder than it looks so I'll just give up now;
I'll let those big brave poet people, write them all somehow.

I will
Write the best Love Poem ever...
Define love, finally...
In free verse or in rhyme...
Refine love from all emotions...
Divine love for the lacking...
Confine the what, where, how and who...

Will style and technique suffice?
Shall I
Write trochee when catching my breath,
Carve words in spondee for lasting ecstasy,
Pen dactyl tri-syllables for your hair,
Use iambics for your lips,
If my best is anapest,
I'll use it for your eyes.
I can beat out tetrameters, pentameters,
And go as far as hexameters?

When I'm finally finished
Struggling over the number of lines,
I may settle for,
Elegy or sonnet,
Ballad, lyric or ode.

My final line should read:
That's all you need to know.

i have ******
i have felt
but i have never
(not once)
been in love

not "well, maybe once"
nope
never
have i

been in love

been in love
it rolls off the tongue
with a force of its own
a cascade of eddies
flit about the edges

a past tense
slave to the future

been in love
a remembered caress
a needle
a sledgehammer
either way
it does not stammer
it babbles on
a brook a crook

we consent
not to its content but its
unmistakable steps
we bend
to its
innocence

the way it moves consumes

it is, i think, in a sense
what makes us want it
so much
it is what steals the breath

air replaced with
babbling
over tome of stone

i have gladly
taken a scalpel
to its made bed
revealing bones alone

i spit metaphors
and stumble to my knees,
i wipe similes from my lips
like blood and teeth.
i am pummeled with irony fists
as i stagger and crash
across barstools in anapest reels,
with splinters of broken
clauses enjambed in my flesh
and choppy flashbacks
blinding me, pounding my head.
i slip in spilled spirits,
scrabbling and scrambling
to steady my psyche.

i flail, i falter, i fall,
again and again in alliterative agony.

this is not a beating.
this is catharsis.

(Happy 150th, Canada!)


Canada Day -  Just One?

With love from an ‘umble Yank

But every day is Canada Day!

The afternoon plane lands in Halifax
When the hatch is popped, cool air rushes in
Even the fog is happy in Canada

The Muskogee never made landfall here
And so we pilgrimage for her, complete
Her voyage from ’42 to Canada

Wolfville, Grand Pre’, Le Grande Derangement
The Deportation Cross and beer cans
Well, God forgive the Redcoats anyway

Newfoundland
Is a bold
Anapest

The church spires in a line, the light is green
The bold young captain shoots the narrows wild
Can you find your way to your painted house?

To walk again the cobbles of Ferryland
And smell the very blue of the Atlantic
The sea-blown wind is cold in Canada

Blue Puttees and a mourning Caribou
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord
Good children sing “We love thee, Newfoundland”

Quebec – royal city of New France
May Le Bon Dieu bless the Plains of Abraham,
And may God bless
The signs an English driver cannot read

The Coca-Cola streets of Niagara Falls
Yanks laugh at made-in-China Mountie mugs
And buy them, happy to be in Canada

A cup of Toujours Frais from – well, that place
But to us in your southern provinces
Below Niagara, Tim too is Canada

Though Canada goes on, these scribbles must not -
Your grateful guest wishes only to say
That every happy day is Canada Day!

When I was young I wasn’t taught
How poems are written using thought
I have no idea what the poetic terms mean
And lines should be worked until pristine

Alliteration, Anapest, Assonance, Blank verse
Too much for the mind to traverse
Tercet, Trochee, Refrain and stanza line
Apparently free verse means lines don’t rhyme

I feel it’s all a bit clinical and cool
And poetry shouldn’t follow a written rule
It’s not something than can be planned
Like an essay written on demand

Poetry is love, lost and found
It’s anger, regret, a human battleground
It’s all of you, written down on a blank page
It’s grief, laughter, hope and rage

Poetry is a flow of all your fears
Written with ink of salted tears
And emotions tumble into cyber space
Searching for a connection, they cannot trace

Every poet travels the downward dip
Of the emotional power trip
Feels the soul of the written word
That bleeds more freely than the cut of a sword

My perfect meter
Is a haiku when I want
To write a haiku

Iambic pentameter that I write
So often goes unnoticed by you all

Dachtyl meter
Trochee meter
Even lord Byron's
Anapest meter

And then there is meter I invent
Sent to my soul
From the stars
But always very rhythmic
Read it aloud
You'll hear my voice
Through my words.

Canada Day?  Just One?

With love from an ‘umble Yank

But every day is Canada Day!

The afternoon plane lands in Halifax
When the hatch is popped, cool air rushes in
Even the fog is happy in Canada

The Muskogee 1 never made landfall here
And so we pilgrimage for her, completing
Her voyage from ’42 to Canada

Wolfville, Grand Pre’, Le Grande Derangement
The Deportation Cross and beer cans
Well, God forgive the Redcoats anyway

Newfoundland
Is a bold
Anapest

The church spires in a line, the light is green
The bold young captain shoots the narrows wild
Can you find your way to your painted house?

To walk again the cobbles of Ferryland
And smell the very blue of the Atlantic
The sea-blown wind is cold in Canada

Blue Puttees and a mourning Caribou
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord
Good children sing “We love thee, Newfoundland”

Quebec – royal city of New France
May Le Bon Dieu bless the Plains of Abraham,
And may God bless
The signs an English driver cannot read

The Coca-Cola streets of Niagara Falls
Yanks laugh at made-in-China Mountie mugs
And buy them, happy to be in Canada

A cup of Toujours Frais from – well, that place
But to us in your southern provinces
Below Niagara, Tim too is Canada

Though Canada goes on, these scribbles must not –

Your grateful guest wishes only to say
That every happy day is Canada Day!

stay in style substance
the formatted displays of high society
for a day
then get gritty get down
get ***** where most of the world
lives
where the entrails
meet the nitty gritty
and leave the counting of syllables
silly when you take a look
at it, the anapest is a spondee
of silliness
**** all that
poetry I claim for
the common man
now rules and laws are
but to keep us out
**** all you arrogant mfs
you can **** my assonance

THE DIVINE MENTOR               Anapest
Only You were quite free from all sins.
You were pure all Your life, that was hard.
You perceived women through their own needs
not through Your selfish wants from the world.

Your own likes were not felt in Your heart,
which was filled with the poor and Your help.
You forgot all Your taste of good life
and just gave what can prop their upkeep.

You could say a few words to shun death,
but Your life was a style for poor men.
Through Your cross You could save man from woe,
and You showed how the cross could bring gain.
BY JOSEPH ZENIEH
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
____________