Wednesday, May 10, 2023

How To Plant A Poem For Action, comic poem number 190 by Angela Lansbury





 Bunched, jumbled words jump in my brain

I sort them into sentences

Space them like trees down my clean page

And decorate new thoughts again


I let the prefixes explain

Recall poets should not complain

And throw out all their dirty words

Like drenching rain down a dark drain


But after each poem's begun

Plant seeds, prune, 'til verses harden

Through wild meadows lay a clear path

To secluded, secret gardens


Thoughts start to flow, start to grow

You do as much as you are able

You think of seeds, uproot a weed

The day's tasks listed like flower labels


Where choruses like trellis grow

And in full sun bright colours glow

End with faint glow like setting sun

You, and the last perfect word, go.


Go to picnic, go to dinner

Go to rest, to drink or party

Go to sweet sleep, resigned to die

Leave behind gardens you started.

-ends-

The poem is a joke about how you wake up muddled in the morning and try to sort out your thoughts day with lists. The joke in the last verse but one is that the last word is short, go, and ends the distraction and inactivity of writing or reading a poem. Then I added the last verse. Go to party, go to sleep, go to die. Prepare to die is less hard but resigned echoes the vowel. Your choice when copying and reprinting. But remember to add by Angela Lansbury.



 

No comments:

Post a Comment