ON POETRY

On Poetic Composition

Hum-de-dum,
Poems come.

                                              Hi-de-ho,
                                              Poems go.

Great poems pop into the brain in a flash.

                        By the time they are on paper they are nothing but trash.
                        Unless my pen is quick as a wink,
                        Writing down every thought that I think.

This was the next to the last poem in "My Poems, My Goodness!" written on the pages of the Lawyers Day Book. I was seventeen or eighteen by that time, and already aware I was having memory problems. Astute? I think not; I wasn't aware it would only get worse.

The last poem in the book needs an additional line, and its last line needs to be written with a word that rhymes. I really left it dangling, badly.

On the page headed the 106th Day I wrote two really wacky poems, one totally nonsense and the other with an attitude of conceit. (Let's just call it tongue-in-cheek. It wasn't and still isn't written about anyone in particular.)

Patriotism of a Sort

After hearing that Lincoln was dead,

                            And was shot in the back of the head,
                                    A man in a furry
                                    Rose up in a hurry,
                            But tired and went back to bed.

Limericks have a habit of becoming crass if you let them. That one was stupid.

My Contemporary

                                      You, I class as nutty.
                                      Your brain, I think, is putty!
                                      Whatever you think
                                      I know must stink,
                                      For your rhyme is lazier,
                                      Your poems crazier,
                                      And downright hazier,
                                      Than mine — I think.

At the bottom of the 81st Day there is a couplet, the last of my poems about poems.

True Confessions

Some things I write just shouldn't be.
Just turn the page and you shall see.

That completes the topic "On Poems" and gives me something to draw you back next time. That, however, is not the way I want to treat my readers. Those who like what they read here will return. Those who don't, won't. So I turn the page for you and give one last limerick.

There once was a preacher named Paul,

                        Who preached to the towns, large and small.
                               When they called him to Rome
                               He wished to go home,
                        But they took him there after all.

I can't actually recall what I didn't like about this limerick when I wrote it. Perhaps I thought it was sacrilegious to use Biblical names and places in secular poetry. If that was the case, I no longer have those inhibitions.