"iambs" poems
Sometimes the poem
doesn't want to come;
it hides from the poet
like a playful cat
who has run
under the house
& lurks among slugs,
roots, spiders' eyes,
ledge so long out of the sun
that it is dank
with the breath of the Troll King.
Sometimes the poem
darts away
like a coy lover
who is afraid of being possessed,
of feeling too much,
of losing his essential
loneliness-which he calls
freedom.
Sometimes the poem
can't requite
the poet's passion.
The poem is a dance
between poet & poem,
but sometimes the poem
just won't dance
and lurks on the sidelines
tapping its feet-
iambs, trochees-
out of step with the music
of your mariachi band.
If the poem won't come,
I say: sneak up on it.
Pretend you don't care.
Sit in your chair
reading Shakespeare, Neruda,
immortal Emily
and let yourself flow
into their music.
Go to the kitchen
and start peeling onions
for homemade sugo.
Before you know it,
the poem will be crying
as your ripe tomatoes
bubble away
with inspiration.
When the whole house is filled
with the tender tomato aroma,
start kneading the pasta.
As you rock
over the damp sensuous dough,
making it bend to your will,
as you make love to this manna
of flour and water,
the poem will get hungry
and come
just like a cat
coming home
when you least
expect her.
8.7k
(I hate poets.
They annoy me deeply.)
I.
There are the balladeers,
Working in service of their inner Service,
(Though, despite the seeming impossibility,
Their hackneyed verse is even worse)
Creating tortuous rhyme
Which slows down labyrinthine narratives
Ending up in some deus ex machine
So implausible that it would make Euripides blush
(Most often courtesy of some unforeseen projectile
Or sudden viral contagion;
Would that their creators meet such a fate!)
II.
I come not to praise the so-called sonneteers,
But to bury them.
They are an earnest lot,
(Lord knows that they are earnest)
And they will make their fourteen lines rhyme
(Though sometimes the rhyme scheme screams for mercy)
And hang the cost.
Though their narratives are head-scratching things,
And their iambs proceed with the steadiness
Of a nonagenarian church pianist
Doing her damndest to fight the wedding march to a draw,
They are content, nay, proud of their work
Because babble rhymes with Scrabble
(Though they are not particularly proficient with the latter,
They have the former down to an art.)
III.
Let us not forget the Buk-zombies,
Those apostles of aphorism,
Most of whom speak of their departed deity
As if he were an old drinking buddy
(Never mind that most of them were two or three
Or perhaps not even a bad idea
In the back seat of some mom’s Buick
When he exited this mortal plane, stage left, even.)
One’s mind is boggled whilst considering
The expanse of the bar required to accommodate
Everyone who would like to
(Or worse, have claimed to)
Buy old Charlie a beer, not that he’d stand for a round.
They are a sullen horde, this lot,
Best dealt with by aiming for the base of the skull.
IV.
Ah, the confessionals, Lord have mercy upon their souls
(For they shall have none upon ours.)
They feel so many things so deeply
As such things have never been felt before
(They have not read their Sexton, their Snodgrass,
Their Lowell, their Pl--well, no,
They have all read their Plath.)
It is, from the moment they arise in the morning
Until such time they set aside their fears and let sleep take them,
All too much for them,
And they bravely face the days
Until such time they care bear to take action
And fling themselves from some convenient precipice.
We should, as a service to them and ourselves,
Ensure the soles of their shoes
Are sufficiently worn and slippery.
(I hate poets.
They annoy me deeply.)
Jan 12, 2017
Jan 12, 2017 at 11:22 AM UTC
Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch
Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching embrace
you climb, skittish kite ...
What do you know of the world’s despair,
gliding in vast solitariness there
so that all that remains is to
fall?
Only a little longer the wind invests its sighs;
you stall
spread-eagled as the canvas snaps
and ***** its white rebellious wings,
and all
the houses watch with baffled eyes.
Originally published by Poetry Porch. Keywords/Tags: Icarus, flight, flying, hang-gliding, kite, glider, wind, canvas, South, southern, truck, unspooled
Note: The following poem unites Icarus with Tom O'Bedlam in a final, magical quest ...
Finally to Burn
(the Fall and Resurrection of Icarus)
by Michael R. Burch
I.
Athena takes me
sometimes by the hand
and we go levitating
through strange Dreamlands
where Apollo sleeps
in his dark forgetting
and Passion seems
like a wise bloodletting
and all I remember
—upon awaking—
is: to Love sometimes
is like forsaking
one’s Being—to glide
heroically beyond thought,
forsaking the here
for the There and the Not.
II.
O, finally to Burn,
gravity beyond escaping!
To plummet is Bliss
when the blisters breaking
rain down red scabs
on the earth’s mudpuddle...
Feathers and wax
and the watchers huddle...
Flocculent sheep,
O, and innocent lambs!
I will rock me to sleep
on the waves’ iambs.
III.
To Sleep, that is Bliss
in Love’s recursive Dream,
for the Night has Wings
pallid as moonbeams—
they will flit me to Life,
like a huge-eyed Phoenix
fluttering off
to quarry the Sphinx.
IV.
Riddlemethis,
riddlemethat,
Rynosseross,
throw out the Welcome Mat.
Quixotic, I seek Love
amid the tarnished
rusted-out steel
when to live is varnish.
To Dream—that’s the thing!
Aye, that Genie I’ll rub,
soak by the candle,
aflame in the tub.
V.
Riddlemethis,
riddlemethat,
Rynosseross,
throw out the Welcome Mat.
Somewhither, somewhither
aglitter and strange,
we must moult off all knowledge
or perish caged.
VI.
I am reconciled to Life
somewhere beyond thought—
I’ll Live in the There,
I’ll Dream of the Naught.
Methinks it no journey;
to tarry’s a waste,
so fatten the oxen;
make a nice baste.
I’m coming, Fool Tom,
we have Somewhere to Go,
though we injure noone,
ourselves wildaglow.
Apr 14, 2020
Apr 14, 2020 at 3:57 AM UTC
Those were the times — exclaimed master's maid;
When youthful glow was understood —
As dust on shelves — did beauty fade;
Completely changing fair Sir's mood.
The ceremony of served tea
Remains — a consolation sweet,
As beauty brings us — peaceful glee
The Twinings charms — the air suite.
My master is for — Pianissimo;
He plays piano — violin —
Splendidly Fast and Fortissimo;
All sounds swirl into my ***** like Dream!
I'll master perfect iambs late at Night
And Metre and Rhyme will be Sir's Delight!
May 26, 2015
May 26, 2015 at 2:04 PM UTC
I am;
Partly shiny but mostly dull,
kinda Bo Peep-ish,
I'm into wool.
I'm an errant bent penny of
dubious worth,
a fickle little tickle
on the funny bone o' mirth.
I am
Tapioca pudding after
Chicken coq au vin.
And I am
an iamb
a gestalt of a man.
Aug 20, 2012
Aug 20, 2012 at 3:22 PM UTC
Who won if all was lost in love and war
And death awaited every soul
Who won if life was all but sour and bore,
To which we turn our shoulders, Cold.
This path of life doth lead to loss
In which our stay is all but brief
Our minds and souls are tragic flaws
That drives us all to endless grief.
So, when all man hath ceased to speak,
And echoed lines hath ceased to Rhyme
Our knees will buckle at our feet
To bare such grief till ends of Time.
Feb 3, 2014
Feb 3, 2014 at 10:21 PM UTC
One does not simply write little sonnets
Like my English teacher wants me to do.
My mind wanders to tales of hobbits
And wish I were writing simple Haikus.
Old men, so bored, had to make this stuff up.
Iambs, pentameter, all lost on me.
And some rhyming pattern I’m forcing: sup?
Simply stated, it is not how I think.
Trying to be clever while writing this,
With some deeper meaning that is unknown,
Though—tortured soul I am missing and wish
That that Shakespeare would have left it alone.
But I suppose that’s why he’s important
And all my poems come off as abhorrent.
Jun 10, 2015
Jun 10, 2015 at 10:44 PM UTC
Kamau Brathwaite wrote
That "the hurricane doesn't roar in pentameters"
And I really believed it could be true
That Caribbean hurricanes had their own cadences, their own dances :
Ida was reggae, Allen was merengue Brigitte was gwoka
David was cha cha cha and Edith was kadans rampa and Dorian calypso
All dactyls hatched instead of iambic pentameters
Out of each island Zeus 's head
Until i met the still eye of Hurricane Muse.
Muse was her nickname
Her real name was Shar
Named after shark and share and shear
and sharon,
Named after a calypso rose
Fearless except for lizards, a rose of tiny thorns
With a taste of a stormy black coffee
Born to a dragon of Jade and a white *** tigress
In the midst of the 1961
hurricane season.
Shar has the S of Sébastien Sally Sam Shary Sean and Sara
The H of Humberto Hanna Henri Hermine Harold and Hélène
The A of Andrea Arthur Ana Alex Arlene and Alberto
And the R of Rebecca René Rose Richard Rina and Rafael
And she dances not only calypso
And quadrille and zouk
But a mix as well of Salsa Hustle Affranchi and Reggae
In iambic pentameters
While she gently paints fearless green lizards
Having her five iambs of coffee
First thing in the unstressed and stressed morning
Before she even opens the syllables of her still Muse eye.
Sep 7, 2019
Sep 7, 2019 at 3:23 AM UTC
there's no poetry between us
in the inches of soil and grass that add milage to the distance
there is no tragic stanza
no iambs to recount and consider
no melody
my heart has a break in it
a faultline unabridged
your spaces are defective.
there's no poetry between us
i don't think there ever was
Mar 6, 2014
Mar 6, 2014 at 5:45 PM UTC
*Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?
then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.*
Jeremiah 13:23
We’re tired of your feline past
predatory darkness cannot last
your claw and tooth, your fangs, your youth –
they get old fast.
Your sullen, incoherent style
has grown intolerably vile.
After the **** your prey is still
in pure denial.
Leopard-phantasms feed the flames;
the thing that spawned you whines and blames
although we could call Motherhood
by harsher names.
Jungle law enforcement should
stop crowning you with victimhood
erase your spots, connect the dots –
we wish you would.
Then lambs with lions shall rejoice
while lines with iambs raise their voice;
spotted pards play wiser cards.
(A better choice.)
Sep 12, 2015
Sep 12, 2015 at 11:50 AM UTC
The iambs in pentameter will dance across the page,
But in fourteeners limp along, with extra two feet left.
Once in another lifetime, writing sonnets was the rage,
The iambs in pentameter would dance across the page.
It seems the sonnet-writer now will only show his age
As more and more write free-verse, leaving formal poems bereft.
The iambs in pentameter will dance across the page,
But in fourteeners limp along, with extra two feet left.
Apr 3, 2015
Apr 3, 2015 at 1:18 PM UTC
Proust kept a log of his untidy mind
inviting readers in to sink, or swim
some find their thoughts are much of the same kind
some feel it's all particular to him
great literature ought to resonate
but still meets a diversity of taste
those hawthorn blossoms of his endless prate
some readers find a shapeless verbose waste
a shorter form fits my attention span
of seventy iambs in rhyming verse
within a reader's mind I dare hope can
evoke a self-consistent universe
a monument to years spent pent in bed
Marcel's rich life was mostly in his head
Dec 29, 2016
Dec 29, 2016 at 5:12 PM UTC
Sweat in shade sweat, shade
and speak an octave higher to four-legged foes
biting your knees and knocking you down
singing in iambs, awaiting the slaughter
and dancing, always dancing
amid triangles on triangles of smoke
Waterfalls cascade, not topple
and human pyramids stay sick and envy
consumes the crowd like a virus
so they bark and sweep like clean linens on whipping posts
Drink faster, leave town
before you encounter sticky blue fingers
before they stain your blouse and cheeks
before they make you grade papers and sing hymns
before curiosity kills your wonder
and your joints buckle and crack
with loud snaps and ringing bells
I don't think you understand the geography
you keep running in circles in my head
while I keep pushing you toward the door
Oct 2, 2014
Oct 2, 2014 at 3:27 PM UTC
I hide behind soft words that grievous be,
make off unkempt to light the night with soul;
far-flung from here I dream unstoppably,
and ne'er return since seas I roam be gold.
Disparaged art for insight into life,
held polystryrene virtue to the fire,
'til melted and deformed the mass took flight,
and 'fumed the scene as if a toxic pyre.
Jesting at the mere hint that iambs soothe,
flame-lick our arms and tongues with what's outside;
no balm of couplets nor prose peace pursues
peripety awash in orange jibes.
While under hoodies, shaggy hair and pearls,
a futile ******* blunder fickle whirls.
Jan 16, 2014
Jan 16, 2014 at 11:07 PM UTC
Now sadly I can’t yet write in iambs very brightly
I can only hope thee become trés pleased by this
I am not able of writing such masterpieces of poetry
Like Shakespeare, light crafts of beauty and Sorrow, fleur d’lys.
I solely can attempt to impress thy soul and being
By typing so eloquently, sadly believing you will ever feel
Such mill of emotion, sole construction of heart and thrill
For I be delighted to be lighting struck for witnessing
Such beauty.
Jun 20, 2014
Jun 20, 2014 at 7:12 AM UTC
an anarchist’s style guide...
Poems are liquid prose. Prose insists. Poems plead.
Kale tastes best in darkness. Residue of texture.
Texture makes the text. Don’t dress it up.
I is romantic vestige. Deport it. Feel the freedom.
Irony is literate decadence. Stick to sarcasm. Common voice.
Drumbeat of iambs in veins. Just the facts, Ma’am.
Edgy as opposed to hard. Violent refusal to respond.
Adjectives limited. Adverbs useless. Nouns just sit.
Ah, but verbs. Verbs as we are. We are verbs. Creating.
Other parts, only utilitarian. Sequence of composition.
Words in a row marching like soldiers to certain death.
Metaphors compressed as diamonds. Regal and rusted.
The clock’s face reveals nothing. Blank chronology.
Humor provides shelter. Lear on the moor. Fool.
Lines in a stanza remain lines. Mere artifice.
Love is in and out of every door. Root of desire.
Say what you must as you must. Shout if you must.
Take whatever you like. Make it new. Make it new.
Feel noose around neck. Have the last word. Anyway.
Jan 27, 2017
Jan 27, 2017 at 4:20 AM UTC
_“For once in my life, I want to be a poem” — Anne Winter_
If I were a poem
Could my poem be a poet?
If such could be done
Who besides me would know it?
If my poem—as a poet—wrote something new
Could I as a poem be the other poem too?
Or would I simply exist on a document list
Along with other poems that coexist?
_(As a poem I would be …)_
Living on the edge of poetry forms’ parameters
Running ever changing rapids of trochees and iambs
Line dancing varied rhythms of iambic pentameters
da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM ad infinitum
Dancing two-step footles with the poem of my dreams
Braving slalom ski runs of Klein’s Vase Verse
Climbing lofty peaks of Heroic Crown of Crowns
Then doing it all over again in reverse
_(I do have a poetic license you know …)_
I think of such thoughts from time to time
When my muse is confused and obtuse
Especially when finding it hard to rhyme
My head flooded with thoughts most abstruse
What would it take for me to be a poem
Vice versa my poem to be poet?
The very next time my muse starts to roam
I’ll try to find out—don’t you know it!
© 2025 Mark Toney
Aug 17, 2025
Aug 17, 2025 at 11:31 PM UTC
It’s the wee things that get to you,
the things that they – the invisible
“they” – don’t think of or deem –
what an egghead word – import.
Like the many languages Pope Francis
speaks to the poorest of the poor – just
books away from Revelation and the
end – apocalypse, they call it?
Like the simple task, simpletons do it
in political campaigns for the simplest
of the simple – cost deferred until a
position be taken if it isn’t ******
Like the contours of the manhood of
the waiter leaning tightly against your
table – as he asks again if you want
your salad with French or Italian.
Like the death of Romano III, a cat of
nineteen, lying alone on a warm rug –
or it was a cold shoulder, the mother
lode of forgiveness.
Like the birth of an heir or heiress of
a circus regnant – a cut above the
silliest of the silly, dancing in the
streets to a playwright’s tunes.
Like the circumcision of a newborn
boy – a social decision on an *****
that doesn’t know itself until puberty,
an unfair decision by a man.
Like the baptism of a child – protection
against purgatory or is it the shoreline
of the Jordan where wading isn’t kosher
when the teenaged lifeguard is absent?
Like the final couplet of the last sonnet
of a poet – her celebration and self-worth
still unrhymed, its meter and iambs
unborn until next week.
Similes slant to the similar, metastasizing
and growing outside the box – oh, ****
the poet says, her wings clipped by a
little thing like a pep rally.
© Lewis Bosworth, 2013
Aug 27, 2016
Aug 27, 2016 at 7:15 PM UTC
The Composition of Shadows (I)
by Michael R. Burch
(for poets who write late at night / by monitor light)
We breathe and so we write; the night
hums softly its accompaniment.
Pale phosphors burn; the page we turn
leads onward, and we smile, content.
And what we mean we write to learn:
the vowels of love, the consonants’
strange golden weight, each plosive’s shape—
curved like the heart. Here, resonant,
sounds’ shadows mass beneath bright glass
like singing voles curled in a maze
of blank white space. We touch a face—
long-frozen words trapped in a glaze
that insulates our hearts. Nowhere
can love be found. Just shrieking air.
Published by The Lyric, Candelabrum, Triplopia, Romantics Quarterly, Iambs & Trochees, Hidden Treasures, ImageNation (UK), Yellow Bat Review, Poetry Life & Times, Vallance Review, Poetica Victorian. Keywords/Tags: writing, poetry, night, monitor, glass, phosphors, web, page, internet, online, social media, sound, files, white space
Mar 23, 2020
Mar 23, 2020 at 9:57 PM UTC
You are a poem; your stanzas are your life:
A prologue written in the long ago
(with some few emendations here and there) (ahem!)
A closure and an afterword await
But now about this part of your life:
The iambs of your footfalls dance in time
While
anapests
leap in search
of a rhyme
Stiff-built trochees stumble clunkily (ouch)
And alexandrines mourn the sometime sorrows of age
And when writing your poem, remember…
Your poetry of life will be truly true
If you almost never write about
you
Aug 9, 2018
Aug 9, 2018 at 4:04 PM UTC
Poets Without Boudoirs
Je suis occupy #hashtag support us
Resistance transcultural support us
Committee manifesto support us
Ministry of culture, yes, support us
Empowerment crucial space support us
Initiatives nonprofit support us
Weaves a layered tapestry support us
Conceptual identity support us
Fresh new voices unflinching support us
Iambs are oppressivist support us
Apr 21, 2017
Apr 21, 2017 at 8:20 PM UTC
Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.
The Tempest III.ii.129-130
Be not
Afraid
Iambs
Are just
The way
We speak
They are
Our natch
Ural
Rhythm
Or:
Be not afraid; iambs are just the way
We speak; they are our natural rhythm 1
Sometimes they must be squashed a bit, and then
(Hear “natural” as two syllables, a pair
Othertimes “natural” is read as three) –
Be a skilled artist in your poetry!
1 “Rhythm” is a trochee, not an iamb
But let it stay, that poor, little lost lamb
Sep 12, 2018
Sep 12, 2018 at 4:20 PM UTC
Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.
The Tempest III.ii.129-130
Be not
Afraid
Iambs
Are just
The way
We speak
They are
Our natch
Ural
Rhythm
Or:
Be not afraid; iambs are just the way
We speak; they are our natural rhythm 1
Sometimes they must be squashed a bit, and then
(Hear “natural” as two syllables, a pair
Othertimes “natural” is read as three) –
Be a skilled artist in your poetry!
1 “Rhythm” is a trochee, not an iamb
But let it stay, that poor, little lost lamb
Feb 7, 2018
Feb 7, 2018 at 7:43 AM UTC