Do I make you uncomfortable? Do I, baby? Yeah!

[rayheinrich]

A recent discussion with a (non-poet) acquaintance brought up two issues:

1. He prefers poems that rhyme -- fair enough, that's the tradition he's used to
and
2. He would rather I just wrote the funny poems, because that's what I'm best at.

"I don't like all that other stuff.  It's dark and twisted and I don't want to read something that
makes me uncomfortable.  I come to your page because you're always good for a laugh." -- Discuss.

1. When people tell me this, I say, "I like those too".  I used to say a lot of other useless things,
but nowadays, this one suffices.

2. People who like to read my writing (what portion is immaterial) are saints, their tastes are just fine as is;
I tell them: "I like those too."

Anyone who can write funny poems has mastered all the gadgets necessary to write anything they
damn well please.

1. It is hard to write rhymed verse, because all the good rhymes are gone.

        RhymeZone

It is hard to rhyme and not appear jingly-jangly.

        That's why it's hard.

2. ... Anyone can write funny pomes. Humour is the lowest form of entertainment.

I love you, I appreciate all the sound critiques you've been contributing to PigPen,
and I think those two statements are, intellectually speaking, really-really-stupid.

Funny poems are hard to write, even unintentionally.
Humour's range is vast and profound, from Shaw to Wilde to Python to billy (Benny Hill?).

...that's what I meant - humour isn't art, only tragedy is art. hence humour goes well with rhyme,
like neo-nazis falling in love with each other.

Intellectually speaking:  Really-really-really-stupid.
(Though the "like neo-nazis falling in love with each other" earns you a few points.)

I think light verse sounds better when it rhymes as well.

All other conclusions draw naturally from that one.

I pretty much agree; though, as for myself, I'd leave out the "as".


No need to for me to say more, as it's already been said so well (bold added by me):

... I don't see that there's a real division between rhyme/non-rhyme, simply because to me,
rhyme is just another tool to be used...  

...As for "anyone can write funny poems", I'm going to have to go with no on that one too...
... I don't really separate things into categories ...
... a limerick, or a vile sonnet about bestiality ...

... both work and fail depending on the skill of the poet. it's called poetry, not sonnet or free verse...
... i'm a smut merchant that thinks all poetry is as easy or hard as a poet is skilled or unskilled...

... rural American south ...Things bust out of the walls here; for instance I just heard a voice from beyond
that made the baseless observation that profundity is the cup humor drinks from when it's sick.
And that humor is wasted  when more than three people in any one place get the joke ...

Art, and life, are best when the tragic and comic are in balance ...

Michael Mcneilley, a wonderful poet/friend of mine, knew a bunch of good poets besides Bukowski*.
One he loved especially was Len Krisak. I mention him because he tends to write "old-fashioned"
rhymey stuff -- sonnets, what have you. I usually trot him out whenever some troglodyte starts
mumbling about free-verse-rhymed-whatever. I love his sonnets and most anything else he writes.

I've stuffed a few of his poems inside this spoiler (along with the Bukowski footnote):

    Dated Sonnet     - by Len Krisak

Fifteen, she’d never had a lover’s quarrel
With the world. Doe–eyed and proper–prim;
Kissed softly still; still half a flower girl
And half a faithful, pearls–and–sweater steady.
How could the world have known that she was ready,
In 1963, to deal with him
When he dealt her his death by double–barrel?
Unseen Rebecca of a father, Earl
Would not come out. We held hands in the dim
Light of TV so low we could not hear.
No notice of his service would appear,
And never would I touch her soft brown bangs
Again. Why then these dilatory pangs
Today?  And 60, are you steel still, Carol?




        SONG     - by Len Krisak

The first thin frost
Is clipping afternoon,
And stationery-blue sky has begun

To fade almost to white.
Up high there, in what’s left of light,
Bereft of any hint of sun,
All tints will soon be lost.
And yet there’s still that towering moon
In dirty-dime disguise,
The silver-pin jetliner
That begins to rise,
And, sown by some great hand,
A cast of swallows
Growing ever finer
As my failing vision follows
Toward where they mean to land.




    Lineman       - by Len Krisak

          (Grand Trunk Western Railroad, 1967)

Cocky and freshly spurred, he climbed
Amid the alien corn:  green row
On row arrayed in June and primed.
He climbed and saw those ranked spears grow

As close as ears could get to tracks.
Far off, four rails consumed their ties
Until they were the least of facts
And disappeared before his eyes.

This was his summer job:  to dig
Heels in, step up, belt on, come down.
But slung back in his aerie's rig,
A yellow hard hat for a crown,

The lineman only meant to sight
How far his lonely kingdom ran
From such a pole, at such a height
As might become a brand new man.

He strung the wire and walked till Fall,
To see what might be out of joint.
But nothing there seemed wrong at all,
From vantage clear to vanishing point.




    Held     - by Len Krisak

The raking done, the cut grass bagged and set
Upon the curb, he looks to clear a space
To rest where aching back and deck chair meet.
The twilight settles down at summer's pace
And draws his eye where western sky and sun
Conspire to paint his working day an end
Of gaudy purple fire.  And though retired,
He feels the heft of tools still in his hand.
He holds his drink as if it were a haft
Of ash, and thinks of what that hand has done.
The frosted glass of lemonade perspires
As dusk comes on.  One sugared swallow left,
He lifts it, like a chalice, in a toast
To night and all the toil he misses most.




    Reading the Lees       - by Len Krisak

To build these piles, not difficult at all
If damp and chance and practice will conspire,
I set the claw-foot tines down in the fall—
That time my town forbids the use of fire—
And drag, as if a bird scratching for feed,
Then with a virtuoso's flippant skill
Born out of nothing half so dull as need,
Process to hustle leaves onto a hill.
It grows by dint of half-a-forearm's twist.
The rustling oaks and wads of maples thick
As bank notes mount and mount, it's in the wrist—
The heavy, expert use of it to flick
These butcher-paper-brown and yellow packs
Up high and higher, higher still, until
They start to look like hay in Monet stacks
The farm hands build in Frost.  So, with a will
And arm, those leaves are tossed that long have lain
In sodden strata, mulch re-thatched in heaps.
The tannic acids that have left their stain
On paving stones take hold in sun that steeps
Them in their rotting molds and potpourris
Of Indian summer.  Now I long to smoke
And smell this autumn's simmering of teas
So richer than the summer's, one might choke.
But these are other times and other falls
The winds have driven down.  I mind the law
The way I mind the lawn, as labor calls
Me from my past and from that sense of awe
Once everyone would own to:  smells so strong
And sweet and pungent they'd intoxicate
With incense in ascent in braids of long
Grey steam.  But that was then; it is too late
By half by now to sacrifice the leaves
To late November gods who are not there.
I think of tall brown penny rolls of sheaves,
Then drink the last lost brew that scents the air.




From a Midwest Motel Window     - by Len Krisak

Across the field and far beyond,
Twin elevators rise.  They say,
With concrete pride, that grain–au fond–
Lies at their feet.  Some Pharaoh may

Have raised them to this height, these sleek
Grey columns turning almost white
In noonday sun.  Soaring, they speak
Of other things, no doubt:  of light

That leads the eye toward Heaven, high
Above, of stewards here that seek
To store up bread on Earth.  The sky
Around them knows their worth, and, meek

And blue, recedes to let them show
Their faith in what cannot be topped:
A neon cross prepared to glow
When night comes on, and God's sun's stopped.




    Verona: Sonnet #2     - by Len Krisak

The playground called "the park": three diamonds once,
Then, only one providing fans a cage.
Worn down to khaki talc, the other two
Survived in only faintly rhomboid traces.
On these, the five of us swung for the fences.
(There would have been no point to stolen bases,
Sacrifices, suicides, or bunts.
Besides, those were too hard for kids our age.)
A fly to right was out, force-outs were few,
And when it didn't rain, the skies were blue.
What girls we knew had not yet had their menses.
Well, Bobby's sister Betty--maybe--who
Could homer farther than you ever saw,
And rounding third, elicited pure awe.




==============================================================================
*Michael met Bukowski while he was working as a projectionist at a porno movie theater. Bukowski would come up
and beat on the projection room door when Michael screwed up the focus or the sound level. Both of them soon took
to drinking together in the projection room and not giving a damn when anything screwed up.