POEMS ARE MEANT TO “TAKE THE TOP OF YOUR HEAD OFF”

I try to write with vim and vigor

And say what’s really on my mind;

And do it with a kind of rigor

But bounded by how I’m confined:

By lines are measured out in syllables

That rhyme as well. They can be thrillables

As only rhyme and verse can do

While prose displays a dull IQ.

I wouldn’t have you think I’m snobby.

But poetry was meant for verse

Invented as it was to curse,

When Simmonides, Hammurabi

Of poets, first laid down the law

That poems work like a power saw.