Ill-advis­edly

So long story… There’s this topic I’ve been think­ing about for months; this morn­ing I found myself com­pelled to draft a post on it. Then this after­noon, I saw this poster which neatly sums up a metaphor I used in the post. (It may be up tomor­row maybe.) I searched for the full poem by Douglas Malloch, which is how I found myself on Poetry​.com.

I noticed – they have a poetry con­test? Which does­n’t have an entry fee? So this hap­pened. Then I noticed there is an entry fee: $25. Then I remem­bered I actu­ally have a website.

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My rathers would place me
Underneath the night sky
In a dis­tant place,
Communing with the higher self.

My bet­ters would advise
Consulting the library shelves
To learn from their opus – opuses? Opii?
They also rec­om­mend night skies.

My whethers ques­tion the wisdom
Of typing at all, given the facts:
It is not night; my room­mate is snor­ing;
The library is a ghetto now…

But whethers are boring. We’re here.
Ill-advis­edly, but with excel­lent cheer
I shall write a poem.

I shall not men­tion Trump,
Except in pass­ing.
This is nei­ther a cul­ture dump,
Nor a zeit­geist heist.

I will ramble, scheme­less, on, until
This pass­ing whim has had its fill
Of cheap, unpol­ished doggerel.

Gratefully, I behold a dawn­ing metre -
But per­haps I star­tled it?
Perhaps like a quan­tum par­ti­cle it
Collapses under obser­va­tion?
We perser­vere, sans organization.

They say (I think they do; don’t they?)
Rhyming is so passé -
Perhaps… but it would help.
It would be a straw for the clutches
Of my drown­ing ratio­nale.
But per­haps they
(If they do say) say right;
Bad enough that I use punctuation.

Quick note: ital­ics are allowed?!
Dare we? But merely con­ceiv­ing the thought
Banished the other for which I was reach­ing,
And now we wel­come the pas­sive tense?
I can hear the thun­der­ous breath­ing
Of my common sense upon my heels;
The tape is scratch­ing off the reel,
And the rhyming is back again.

And why do I cap­i­tal­ize every line?
Didn’t I stop that in 2018?
And whence the line ‘twixt meta and obscene?
Ah, yes, archaic con­trac­tion;
Bingo card com­plete.
Is the party over?
What do my nevers say?

…

They never say.

Good day.

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Full dis­clo­sure: my room­mate wasn’t snor­ing. I don’t have a room­mate. I was alone at home.

Found a pretty good line for the bio on the sub­mis­sion form though: “I’m a graphic designer crawl­ing toward a Comp Sci degree on a dis­tant (dis­tance?) plat­form. I usu­ally stick to rudi­men­tary shapes and icons – but in extra­or­di­nary cir­cum­stances, I evolve the power of language.”

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By the way – from Poetry.com’s Contest Terms and Conditions, sec­tion titled ‘Copyright and Moral Rights’:

• You grant to us an exclu­sive, world­wide, roy­alty-free, per­pet­ual and irrev­o­ca­ble license to copy, store, edit, dis­trib­ute, trans­mit and pub­lish your com­pe­ti­tion entries.
• To the max­i­mum extent per­mit­ted by applic­a­ble law, you irrev­o­ca­bly and uncon­di­tion­ally waive your rights to be iden­ti­fied as the author of your com­pe­ti­tion entries and to object to any deroga­tory treat­ment of your com­pe­ti­tion entries.

Let’s incul­cate the habit of read­ing (insert ‘pray­ing hands’ emoji) the terms and conditions.

Good day.