"iambic" poems
dedicated to all the better poets here...
don't know much about a quatrain
don't know how to write a refrain,
surely could not compose a
courtyard elegy
maybe after
and still untilled,
I been buried,
'n checked out
the neighborhood competition...
as for limerick,
that is Dr. Seuss
and Ogden Nash's shtick
with whom, eye,
a believed descendant,
cannot compete...
Oh dear me,
no ode node-ed within,
as for a pastoral,
kinda hard to feat,
where I live,
a pastoral is grass cracks
surviving under,
breaking through to the other side
of concrete and blacktop rulers
Maybe one of you
will haiku,
send us a senryu,
send off, see ya!
the doc once diagnosed
a severe case of inflamed iambic pentametery,
with antibiotics and a diet of Hamletery,
was cured most satisfactorily
this silly pen-man-sinking-ship
ain't capable of dat,
boy how 'bout
an epitaph
for a graveyard stone,
should be plenty of room...
as it will be plenty short...
all eye see and all eye know
is vignettes that birth in me
walking down the street,
that's my bread and butter,
my soul's delicacies...
and moments that recorded
here, for a posteriored posterity,
as noted in my all my living
testaments,
drinking and spilling the vin,
from the uninvented igniting vignettes
that consecrate and connect our
knowing each other though odds are
we will never meet...we can yet
drink together
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Don't know much about the French I took.
But I do know that I love you,
And I know that if you love me, too,
What a wonderful world this would be."
May 3, 2015
May 3, 2015 at 7:50 AM UTC
I’m no author, novelist or poet.
I’m just Me,
And don’t I know it.
I don’t need to be classified,
As long as I’m writing, I’m satisfied.
Typing out words, line by line,
I don’t care if they don’t rhyme.
I don’t care if my verses don’t scan:
I’m not always an Iambic Man.
I just say what I gotta say,
I’m not worried about any pay.
Words come to me without much bidding,
The world of its evils I hope to be ridding.
I love to spread lots and lots of Love,
Bringing peace to all like a messenger dove.
Things of beauty bring joy, John Keats rightly said,
To make us sleep easy when we go to bed.
So I’ll paint what I paint,
And sing what I sing,
Just letting those words
Do their magical thing.
Paul Butters
Nov 15, 2015
Nov 15, 2015 at 4:54 AM UTC
I cannot write a sonnet; it's too hard
To put such barriers around my brain
And thus I find my efforts often marred
Although I rephrase again and again
I cannot write a sonnet though I try
Through day and night; through winter, into spring
And even though I have no reason why
A ten-syllable line my thoughts won't bring
But now I wonder just what is so great
About this iambic pentameter?
And am almost resigned that it's my fate
That from the sonnet form I should defer
Yet, having spent so long in search of one
'Twould be a shame if it should not be done
May 12, 2010
May 12, 2010 at 5:46 AM UTC
(explicit)
**** my soul
with poetry
scream out my gracious name
slay me with words
that peel my layers
and simultaneously
drive me
insane
finger me slowly, hotly
with just the right rhythm and rhyme
push me past my
tender limits
into tongues of syntax,
sublime
alliterate my senses
(in swift stac
c-at
o)
until my mind is but blank verse
mess up my stressed
and unstressed syllables
in unsung language, versed
I will speak to you in vowels
(the only sound
I will be able to make)
as you stroke
my iambic pentameter
in the heat of frothed-up
ache
we are this heroic couplet, you see
even if the meaning seems veiled
no need for simile or metaphor
as I feel your chest rise
in deep inhale
we are a natural paradox
so many ironies abound
discordant harmony
is our synaesthesia
in visible darkness found
and I love this delicious enjambment
as your aura invisibly slips
into mine
our lines have no beginning,
no end
as we undo
the boundaries
of time
Oct 3, 2017
Oct 3, 2017 at 5:18 PM UTC
They will tell you there is a right way.
They will hand you a torch and call it the sun.
They will roll their words in raw linen and whisper:
"This is what poetry is meant to be."
And you will nod.
Because they have made it so that not nodding feels like blasphemy.
But listen—
the ink does not check your credentials.
The meter does not ask if your suffering is organic.
A line does not collapse because it was crafted instead of bled.
They will tell you a poem must be naked, barefoot, aching—
as if there is no beauty in a well-cut suit.
They will decry the temple and build a pulpit in its ruins,
preaching freedom in a voice that allows no dissent.
Good poets are cult leaders,
and the first rule of the cult
is that they are not one.
So write the sonnet, carve the sestina,
sculpt the page in iambic steel.
Or break it, shatter it, scatter its bones—
but let no one call your wreckage untrue.
And if they do,
smile.
Because poetry does not kneel to priests.
Feb 18, 2025
Feb 18, 2025 at 2:11 AM UTC
Make your poems Memorable,
That’s what I say.
No need to be incredible,
Just let them play.
Read them with your inner voice,
Write them that way too.
Hear the music in those words,
This I’m telling You.
In ancient times these poems were songs,
Remembered off by heart.
At least you’d call them statements,
Knowledge to impart.
Iambic metre’s very common yes,
And so of course is rhyme:
To make these verses remembered
Through the course of time.
Yet verse is best as poetry,
Lyrical if you will.
We have to write with feeling,
And give the reader a thrill.
Paul Butters
Jun 15, 2014
Jun 15, 2014 at 1:12 PM UTC
I'm the best, there ever was
Can't get with me, at da club
Other poets, need to respect
My reputation, I'll protect
I got a 9, pen in my hand
Write your name, in the sand
To me, you can't never stand
I ain't afraid, to let out a curse
Write you in, an ugly verse
I'm da best, you da worst
You can't, stay with my meter
I spit sick, iambic pentameter
I'm da truth you da cheater
You rhyme like Armstrong rides
You have to dope, ya got no rhymes
You da Cheech I'm da Chong
I write, you smoke da ****
You da burger, I'm da veal
I earn likes, you freakin still
You got da, cheesy *** rhymes
Droppin' words, like love & sublime
I put the free, in free verse
You all about, Nonsense Verse
I drop a sonnet, makes his head Shake
I'm the Chaucer, you da fake
I'm a Lyric, you the Lune
You can't quit writen', too crazy soon
Your stuff is dirt, mines the moon
You want a challenge, get in the ring
I'll make you cry but your mama sing
You'all poets, you got to know
You da fluff, I'm da show
I'm the king of the poets, HELLO
Jan 20, 2013
Jan 20, 2013 at 7:22 PM UTC
I want to use all the alterations, Personifications in the world to impress you.
I want to drive you insane with the oxymorons, the metaphors and the similes.
I want to use coliqual words so that I can make you think I'm extremely smart.
When really in reality I'm just average.
I want to use euphemism and lititoes to really make you think I'm that good with words.
When really in reality I have writers block yet I want to capture your attention.
I want to write an iambic tetrameter with the rhyme scheme ABAB so that you notice some part of me in my writing.
I want my words to ****** with your mind so that some part of you thinks about me...
But I have writers block, There's not much I can do to grab your attention.
Dec 23, 2014
Dec 23, 2014 at 12:06 PM UTC
With generosity of time and care
He teaches her about the things he knows.
Such as a couplet is a rhyming pair
And how a sonnet ought to be composed.
Pentameter iambic is the key
With accents, syllables and scansion too.
It seems a huge and baffling mystery
But bit by bit he gives a hint. A clue.
“It helps to tap your fingers on the desk
To count the syllables and hear the beat.
For some this seems bizarre and quite grotesque
But listen hard and count along. It’s sweet!”
A teacher true who cares for flawless rhyme
I thank you friend for giving me your time.
Jan 18, 2011
Jan 18, 2011 at 7:15 AM UTC
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.
Apr 29, 2012
Apr 29, 2012 at 11:55 AM UTC
Not snowy seraphs of heaven above
Nor lustrous gems by heaven's stonking wall,
Shall outshine the eternal mark of love
Thou blazoned upon the skin of my soul.
Though midst my wake and dreaming hours I know,
Heaven's meanest pier is of burnished gold,
And celestial shores chatoyant than snow,
But all not as bright as the mark I hold.
For when fickle time in layers of life
Shalt shroud me, and away I must then run
To meet the judge of souls, lest lasting grief
Were my soul's fate, I mean to burn and burn,
The fragrance of thy love could still linger
Freshly upon my soul's fading ember.
*#Decasyllabic
#Iambic pentameter
#Quatrains
#Couplet
#Shakespearean sonnet*
Kikodinho Edward Alexandros,
Jumeirah, Dubai, 14th.Jan.2018.
Jan 13, 2018
Jan 13, 2018 at 3:22 PM UTC
this is for the Dreamers, Lovers, and Surgeons
for the Hopeless Stargazer who immortalized his Subject with one hundred and eight sets of fourteen lines in iambic pentameter
for ***** tight clad teenage boys who envied frisky fleas, struggling to make holy ungodly passions with cheap arguments and metaphysical pick up lines
for Disillusioned City Dwellers, who, wandering lonely as clouds, stopped to quietly reflect upon wind-beaten moss-covered crags, and heard God’s whisper thunder from petals and blades of grass
this is for the Dreamers, Lovers, and Surgeons
for Bespectacled Slave Drivers who submersed idle minds in anthologies, forcing them to **** neon yellow on dreams deferred and rivers; slicing and dicing Grecian urns with red ball point pens; bruising and battering, in blue ball point, roads not taken; scalding supermarkets in California with pyroclastic flows of graphite
for those pushing to tear apart lines and letters, reconstructing ,deconstructing, agonizing, imaginizing, bullshitting, and brooding on to crisp white sheets in times new roman twelve point font
for the Monsters and Lollipops that exist in the millimeters between a skull and a brain
this is for the Dreamers, Lovers, and Surgeons slumbering beneath Restless Leaves Under the Moon
Nov 29, 2012
Nov 29, 2012 at 10:39 AM UTC
Nature teaches us our tongue again
And the swift sentences came pat. I came
Into cool night rescued from rainy dawn.
And I seethed with language - Henry at
Harfleur and Agincourt came apt for war
In Ireland and the Middle East. Here was
The riddling and right tongue, the feeling words
Solid and dutiful. Aspiring hope
Met purpose in "advantages" and "He
That fights with me today shall be my brother."
Say this is patriotic, out of date.
But you are wrong. It never is too late
For nights of stars and feet that move to an
Iambic measure; all who clapped were linked,
The theatre is our treasury and too,
Our study, school-room, house where mercy is
Dispensed with justice. Shakespeare has the mood
And draws the music from the dullest heart.
This is our birthright, speeches for the dumb
And unaccomplished. Henry has the words
For grief and we learn how to tell of death
With dignity. "All was as cold" she said
"As any stone" and so, we who lacked scope
For big or little deaths, increase, grow up
To purposes and means to face events
Of cruelty, stupidity. I walked
Fast under stars. The Avon wandered on
"Tomorrow and tomorrow". Words aren't worn
Out in this place but can renew our tongue,
Flesh out our feeling, make us apt for life.
3.4k
She may be our metronome mother
But when was rhythm first discovered?
Did ancient nomads hear it in the sounds of walking?
Did they like how it sounded over them talking?
Did they view the melody
As a felony?
And start to sway their hips
To the crack of whips?
Maybe that wasn't good enough
Maybe we needed more stuff
So we started crossing swords
To create more violent chords
That interested us more
Violence has a catchy hook
That can't be found in a book
But started with a ***** look
Until our brain begins to cook
And we learn to love the beat
As the harmony depletes
We take concert seats
At a darkness feast
There's an iambic pentameter
In the middle eastern theater
That sounds all too familiar
The troubling treble
Of mothers screaming
While superpowers meddle
And innocence is leaving
The reaper is reaping
To a situation heating
Empathy fleeting
Fascist seating
Rhythm beating
Our soundproof homes
Create acoustic cones
That our cries can't escape
Taking the container's shape
Filling our mind
Until we're blind
And only see political teams
Instead of childhood dreams
We fall into a rhythm
Based on deadly decisions
With lethal precision
Like surgical incisions
That don't make us healthy
But support the wealthy
Who whistle a different tune
That will **** us all soon
And as the world crumbles
Their bellies still rumble
Creating a disruptive bass
Their music we must face
With an impossible grace
Or else we'll be replaced
I hear instruments of percussion
Causing concussions
Deflecting discussions
Making us harmfully dance
So we'll have a fair chance
Which seems wrong at first glance
But it's actually a pragmatic trance
Provided by Mister Rhythm
Who carries misery with him
Apr 12, 2018
Apr 12, 2018 at 12:22 PM UTC
In high school
we learn of logarithms, iambic meter
how to balance an equation between zinc oxide
and excess hydrogen gas–
only to find there was no reaction to begin with.
We’re told that colleges get to know you
through three letter acronyms—ACT, SAT, GPA…
and our name is somewhere in the application.
It’s repeated to us to the point of meaninglessness,
like a perpetually chanted word:
Grades, scores and testing, testing, testing.
The students they want know everything
that will be forgotten by their thirtieth birthday.
I anticipate the day
that our Geometry teacher is to write an essay
on the individual’s struggle
against a systematically inhumane society
in Orwell’s 1984
only to receive a “D” under the scrutinizing eye of
the honor’s English teacher
Or, perhaps, the day someone in charge
is faced with some insufferable fate
the textbooks call chemical stoichiometry,
thirty years after repressing memories
of having to memorize the periodic table
Socrates once said that the youth today
will be the demise of civilization.
We contradict our parents, are smug in the face of authority
and tyrannize our poor teachers—
a youth who will ultimately leave behind a world
too damaged for our children to inherit.
Funny he said this
roughly 2,000 years ago–
I think my dad said something like that last year.
But, until the day we grow up to pay taxes
and marry someone we despise,
we’re just stupid teenagers.
Nov 1, 2012
Nov 1, 2012 at 11:37 AM UTC
The Breakfast Fairies (a humorous treatise)
Summoned for to break the fast
of sleep-and-dreams that can no longer last,
As the clock to noon draws nigh,
I happily paddle off to the cabinet
Where the cereals that I CHOSE,
Since I am now a grownup,
faithfully await, calm and in repose.
The refrigerator, in nearby proximity,
sources a Stony-field yogurt,,
A yogurt that I CHOSE,
light and sweet with processed fruit,
due to the miracle of Aspartame.
Distracted, back to the kitchen for
Some multi-grain slices to hail and toast,
Which I prefer dry (no butter)
and ready for anointing with oils of
Strawberry jelly.
To the table return ready to sound
The horn of plenty,
When I see the ****
Breakfast Fairies have struck yet again!
Cousins first to those that reside in nearby dishwasher*
The nefarious fairies guard my health
tho nobody asked them too!
My Crispix, with its malty sweetness,
And the ***** aftertaste of sprayed-on "enriched vitamins,"
has been smothered neath layers of
Granola, with cranberries and nuts,
Contaminated with a hint of cinnamon.
My processed yogurt,
vanished, without a trace,
replaced by their bacterial cousins from Thrace,
which is in Greece,
who, tho white, taste like plain yogurt sourpusses,
Even when littered with blueberries,
Nothing can replace the taste of my
Artificial Sweetener!
Dry toast has been sheeted and shined neath
A tribute of fattening butter,
rationalized by a commonality,
"Everything is better with butter..."
The last indignity is that my coffee,
Not the light brown I cherish
When kissed by whole milk,
Now muddled and muddied by skim milk, so named,
Cause they skim off all the taste.
Because they are fairies,
With fluttering wings,
Hasty retreat they beat,
But I know where they hide.
The next time it be for the morning meal,
I will eat it in bed,
far from their kitchen hiding places,
And celebrate my heroics with original
Frosted Flakes and milk,
And extra sugar just for spite!
The bedroom fairies, living under the pillow,
Emerge to beg in iambic pentameter,
Won't get nary a bite,
Until they they return the poems they stole
From my midnight dreams.
Jun 1, 2013
Jun 1, 2013 at 12:08 PM UTC
In high school
we learn of logarithms, iambic meter
how to balance an equation between zinc oxide
and excess hydrogen gas--
only to find there was no reaction to begin with.
We're told colleges get to know you
through three letter acronyms-- ACT, SAT, GPA
And the students they want know everything
that they'll forget once they turn thirty.
Little do we realize
that if our Geometry teacher were to write an analysis
on the coexistence of good and evil in To **** a Mockingbird,
he would likley receive a "D" under the scrutinizing eye of
the honor's English teacher
Nor do we see that the art instructor would freeze in her tracks
faced with an assignment filled with the insufferable fate of
chemical stoiciometry
Socrates once said that the youth today
will be the demise of civilzation.
We contradict our parents, are smug in the face of authority
and tyrannize our teachers.
Funny he said this roughly 2,000 years ago--
I think my dad said something like that last year.
But, until the day we grow up to pay taxes
and marry someone we despise,
we're just stupid teenagers.
Jul 7, 2011
Jul 7, 2011 at 8:36 AM UTC
there are no limits
on speed,
no bumps to impede
that singular rush of inspiration,
that surging wave we ride
to euphoric highs
defying doubt and disbelief
within and throughout
these paths least-travelled
where rhythmic beats
of compulsion
thrill the air
way beyond the mean,
and we glide
over ambiguous bell
curves
dispelling conspicuous myths
and null hypotheses
with relative ease
where iambic warriors
and wordsmiths,
high on lyrical amphetamines,
wage epic battles
of verse and rhyme
and the blood of creativity
is spilled onto
finite scrolls and screens
where the thoughts and dreams
of poets, peasants and pimps
reign
eternal
~ P ( Pablo)
(8/2/2013)
Aug 2, 2013
Aug 2, 2013 at 3:32 PM UTC
A sonnet's what this is, that much is plain
There really isn't any need to stare
Its introduction's made in this quatrain
Two more will follow, then a rhyming pair
It is iambic, so it goes “dot dash”
Two syllables a foot, five feet a line
The rhythm takes you onward in a flash
The sense of structure's reinforced by rhyme
After the first octet, a change of mood
The sonnet's true intentions are revealed
Its themes are love and essence, nothing crude
Hard hearts begin to melt and ******* to yield
Then closure as it slowly slips away
A soft exit – a pyrrhic fall – spondee.
Oct 21, 2009
Oct 21, 2009 at 12:09 PM UTC
The couplet's first in writing villanelles;
if you desire your work to be its best,
a singleness in purpose always tells.
Of course, the open has the hook that sells,
your reader is seduced to read the rest.
The couplet's first in writing villanelles.
Your second line resides in writer's hell,
the rhyme-rich ending word must meet the test
and singleness in purpose always tells.
Pentameter iambic works just swell,
but matters not, as many will attest.
The couplet's first in writing villanelles.
Last stanza rolls around, the poet's well
is nearly dry, their muse under duress;
a singleness in purpose always tells.
The final lines! Relax, and sit a spell,
enjoy the glow of formal poem's success.
The couplet's first in writing villanelles.
a singleness in purpose always tells.
Apr 15, 2015
Apr 15, 2015 at 9:56 AM UTC
There was once, a girl called Srividya
who ended conversations with a "see yea"
and sometimes with, "Don't wanna be yea"
but had a gentle heart like Mamma mia!
She took it in her head to write
which gave her friends a fright
But, vidya in her heart, was tight
to somehow pour her mind and write
Words from her heart, upon the paper, fell
they came in a tumble; they came pell-mell
when they fell in place, her story, they did tell
and those read said in their hearts, Aawll eezz well!!!
A persistent Vidya never gave up hope
and found some more, when she ran out of rope
She took inspiration from the divine Pope
and in her works, introduced a little operaish soap
Day after day, dawn after dawn
Little srividya wrote like a fawn
She said to herself, lighting the midnight candle on
'Course you can write; you just need to COME ON!
For her words, she used the iambic pentameter
But her cruel friends said, "eyyy, podhum paa peter!"
Her consistent efforts bore fruit; her blog was published
seeing her beautiful works see the light of day, she felt accomplished
Oh you might wonder, what does this tale tell
what is the idea, I'm trying to sell
without much ado, let me just say
A little encouragement goes a long way!
Nov 10, 2012
Nov 10, 2012 at 5:42 AM UTC
Love mourner
Angst angler
Thesaurus eyer
Rip-rapper
Suet idler
Dream creamer
Cascade scribbler
Intro-pee-er
Guts gusher
Endorphinater
Sonnet snoozer
Trochee tripper
Iambic lamer
Spondee sniveler
Whisper whipper
Music quencher
Apt-less adjectiver
Yeast yearner
Simile stitcher
Metaphor monger
Exclaimationizer!
Nov 1, 2010
Nov 1, 2010 at 7:58 PM UTC
It was the day of the wedding of Mr and Mrs Epithalamium they looked quite the Heroic Couplet and full of Romanticism until the Englyn Prose-d the Questionku ‘ Do you take this woman’ … then in a wavering Iambic Pentameter voice the groom whispered ‘I do not know’ ….Mrs Epithalamium felt quite Dizain and tried to scratch out his Ruba’I, the Clerihew stepped forward to comfort her but tripped over some Concrete and felt like a right Cowboy. The brides father, the Russian Chastushka, grabbed the groom and with a Carpe Diem attitude threatened to Choka him.
The guests all gathered in an Enclosed Rhyme with the best man making quite a Dramatic Monologue, the brides mother had her Hybronnet knocked off her head and the chief bridesmaid had her Kimo torn in the affray. The young flower girls Haibun and Hamd both burst into tears as their Crown of Sonnets were totally destroyed.
The Rev. Pantoum pleaded for calm, then repeating his plea for the melee to stop started making a List of the damage, quick as a Ghazal and with great Imagism he protected the Crystalline glass from smashing into Ninette pieces. Meanwhile the poor bride was in a state of Nonet anxiously trying to get past the twins Munaajaat and Musaddas, her Idyll life had been turned upside down, today was the day she had hoped to change her Name to Triolet.
Alliteration watched while women wept, then stepped forward and with a Lyric in his voice asked people to calm down, he told everyone he had Naat come here to watch a display such as this and suggested they went for a hot Canzone to discuss the next move, Tanka and Tyburn readily agreed as they were very hungry and particularly as it was Free Verse it meant they could eat as much as they wanted. The nearly bride couldn’t give a Sijo if she never saw her ex again she was sick of being Kyrielle to and did not want anyone else’s Epyllion and with a final Than-Bauk stormed out of the club…
© 6/4/2013
Apr 6, 2013
Apr 6, 2013 at 5:31 PM UTC
Cats are Iambic Pentameter
Light-footed cats are nature’s iambics
Each subtle feline step unstressed to stressed
Across a lawn, a counterpane, a heart
As a tail-twitching cat ballet, all grace
But dogs are four-beat Anglo-Saxon1 lines
Galumphing heavily and clumsily
Across a moor, a sleeping-bag, a heart
As a tail-wagging country reel (gone bad)
Soft-footed cats are nature’s iambics
And dogs are four-beat Anglo-Saxon lines
1Old English Anglo-Saxon (approx. fifth-twelfth century). Applies to four-stress hemistichal alliterative verse, e.g. Beowulf.
- Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within
Jan 30, 2017
Jan 30, 2017 at 3:49 PM UTC