....about the cockroach
There was a poet who claimed a cockroach came at night and tapped out poems on his typewriter. The roach could not press a letter and the shift button at the same time- thus was born poetry with no caps


What I Felt, Not What I Learnt

How was it that I came to be creator of such poetry

I knew not of a cockroach
who could not push "shift" with his head
I knew not of Shakespeare
cold in his grave and dead

They told me of Peter the Pumpkin Eater
withholding the details of foot and meter

So, I studied the rules and regulations
and felt quite distinct a segregation
from those with high levels of education
who held me with obvious reservation

(William Packard certainly didn't write for me
his dictionary of poetry!)

But unlike some, since birth I've known it
every cell in me is poet
I need not copy the structure of others
Like me they felt it-we are brothers

Feel free if you are able, apply your literary labels

To you who choose to strictly adhere to the rules
who's to say what you might lose

It's the sound you hear inside your heart
not just your ears that makes it art



Poetry by Kathryn Watson
Read 717 times
Written on 2007-03-26 at 23:28

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NotaDeadPoet
side comment: you obviously know all about what you choose not to use--but cummings and Bill have their good points as do wordsworth, dickinson, vergil, Ovid, Cicero, Ferlinghetti, Morrison etc. Like a recipe for success--use a form if you choose to conform, or ---NOT! You do it all so well.
LL
2007-03-27


NotaDeadPoet
wonderfully perfect mirror of my constant philosophy although I like to at time master the challenge of cramming words into specific forms just for the halibut (fishing for a better phrase) hence, the sonnet, haiku but mostly free verse.
2007-03-27