The character of rhyming chapter
of new poet’s simple laughter
curls and spirals as I write;
my plight, to stop the rapture.

The rhyming, rhyming in my head,
it won’t cease, there’s no release; I recede
and grieve and gulp and hope some
see the spark in me and not the lackless lark,
remark you, please. Do you see?
At times the rhymes, though addled patter,
try to climb to what true matters;
seething, weaving, sieving, wreathing,
played poetics disarray displays
a sense of conscious essence
seeking, leaking, pinking, winking at the
rapid rush of rhyme obliquing.
And my meter peters fleeter than the pace
of human race misplaced by space
as I weep replete in sorrow borrowed
from the poets past tomorrow;
leaving fever levered into ball
would make me fall with no recall
as spastic plastic nature nurtures
strange derangement’s fatal flaw,
affixing glyphic kind of mind
to bottom rung that’s strung and hung
below iconic master’s faster flitting wit.
A bit like lying under thunder’s hunger
pounding, sounding; grounding
squawks of fledgling hawks failing
to walk before they fly.
Faster lasting, past all reason,
teasing seasons of despair where
surely purely written words will save me,
grave indeed the need to fetter
chains of rhyme, I could do better,
use my mental feather duster
to unclutter rabid habit. Stop the
rhyming, rhyming in my mind,
please, stop the rhyming in my head.

Erin Elizabeth Kelly-Moen
© Copyright 2/11/04