There is, I hear, a difference of opinion

On the way that a poem, it should be written–

Whether with random lines of nonsense-making,

Or with metered lines of rhythm and rhyming,

Or with unrhymed lines that adhere to a meter,

Or with a sensible story that tells the reader

Something meaningful and useful for their life

Like how to sharpen one’s own wits with a knife.

I never know whether to write a poem

With some random sense of the origin of home

Or to rhyme each line so that every syllable

Is accounted for like a fortress tenable,

Or if I should write with my eyes closed shut

So that I can emit some smut that makes the cut

In some journal or magazine of poetry grand

That is read all around the worlds’ lands,

Or if I should not write anything at all

That is locked up in this cranium skull.

Do tell, should a poem be what is a-rhyming

With a line meter that is much a-vibing

Like the lines that are upon grandma’s face

Or the lines hung on the roadside up in space

Or the lines that are dropped each time you call

From a phone run by the company T-Mobile?

Or should a poem be random shit

That you make up

Without connecting the lines together

In anyway that suits your

Fancy,

While you look a little prancy,

Like a toddler doing the

Potty dancy?

Pray, do tell, what the hell is supposed to be

A poem when all that every single body

Is spitting out is nothing more than a rhyme

Or something with a metered time

Or with no rhyme, in fact, at all

But still a poem, it we shall call?