Rhyming Poetry

    Putting a rhyme in your poem can be

    Quite a quest, but then why else are we

    Hanging out here together, jabbing words at each other

    Giving birth to ideas while the naysayer is smothered?

    We struggle to write out a piece with some meaning

    Then post it and know that our egos need weaning.

    So that is my challenge to you on June fifth.

    Please post your fine rhyming poem here forthwith!

    90 Responses

    1. Pingback: A silly poem | Alysia Starbuck

    2. Why I Don’t Write Poetry

      Haven’t written in a while,
      I’ve gone a few feet – even miles.
      The muse really isn’t much use,
      A fragile thing easily beaten and bruised.
      Waiting on it to inspire
      To write words you’d admire,
      But instead this is all I’ve gotten,
      A missive, easily forgotten.

      Still I hold out all hope,
      That I don’t sound like I’m smokin’ dope.
      Waiting on the words to come together,
      Wound together like on a tether.
      Instead all I get is tripe,
      But really, who am I to gripe?
      At least I’ve gotten a tickle,
      From that muse, so temperamental, so fickle.

    3. Lepidopterous Dreaming

      I watch you dancing on the air
      In free-style choreography,
      Dip and glide, three-quarter time
      The melody played silently.

      No need to fear me, no indeed.
      I wouldn’t harm you, butterfly,
      You are misnamed, you gorgeous thing,
      You should be called a flutterby.

      Once you were an ugly worm,
      Before you burst from your cocoon.
      Now I wonder how you looked
      Back when I would have stepped on you.

    4. Hmm… I guess this qualifies as a poem. It’s actually the lyrics of a song I wrote a few years ago in the style of Francis Cabrel, the legendary French singer everyone should have heard (he’s on YouTube and the song I recommend as an introduction is ‘La Corrida’, which is about a bullfight as seen from the bull’s point-of-view). Anyway, back to more mundane matters like the material below, some of the structure shifts about to suit the music – but I think it still works in a way:

      You can say what you want,
      Oh but I understand.
      You can say what you want,
      And I won’t give a damn.
      You can say what you want,
      And harangue me and taunt me
      And lie, criticize and demand…
      You can say what you want
      But it’s not what I’ve got in my plan.

      You don’t know what I want,
      You don’t hear what I say.
      You don’t know what I want,
      You don’t care anyway.
      You don’t know what I want’s
      Not a token response
      To my fears and despairs and my pain.
      You don’t know what I want,
      But you throw me some promises,
      Hoping I’m gonna see only your way.

      But I’m me, and that’s good enough,
      If I’m free to live and to love
      And believe I can be what I’m dreaming of.

      In a world full of greed and anger and need
      It is so hard to see where I stand.
      But I’ll follow my needs and set my own speed
      And go on and be all I can…
      All I am.

      Let me be what I want,
      Nothing more, nothing less.
      Let me be what I want,
      I assure you there’ll never be any regrets.
      Coz I’m me, and that’s good enough,
      If I’m free to live and to love
      And believe I can be what I’m dreaming of.
      Let me be what I want.

    6. This is for you, my child I never knew
      Would your blanket be pink or would it be blue?

      You grew under my heart like a seed in the loam
      Then softly you whispered, “I have to go home”
      Where porcelain angels tucked you in bed
      While the gold of a halo encircled your head.

      Did you rum with the dinosaurs? Swing on a stay?
      Did you ever eat peanut butter out of a jar?

      Did you whisper your secrets to the sweet, gentle breeze?
      Who kissed the pain from your little scraped knees?

      Is there a refrigerator door where your artwork was shown?
      Are there marks on the wall to show how much you’ve grown?

      Were you always happy? Were you ever sad?
      Did you know your sisters? Remember your dad?

      The universe moves at a singular pace
      And there’ll be a time when we’ll meet face to face.

      We’ll relive our lives since our early goodbye
      We’ll have all our talks and laugh ’til we cry.
      Yes, angels loved you but please know, so did I.

      As souls fill the heavens, one after another
      I know that you’ll know me for I was your mother.

    7. I wrote this back in grade school and I fear I’ll never write a better rhyming poem.

      The rabbit has a habit of wrinkling his nose,
      He looks to me like he’s smelling a rose.

      (Isn’t it funny the things we remember?)

    8. OK, I am posting for the first time to your site, Ann. But, I have been reading it since I took your course online through ed2go. I recently set up my own blog to force myself to a measly 500 words per day minimum. It moves to 2000 in two weeks. Yikes! I just posted something on a poem that I had written when in middle school, a few years back. 🙂 I revised it today to meet a silly 7 syllable per line with an aaBC aaBC pattern. I made the pattern up. I am clearly not a poet near the likes of your frequent commenters and yourself. But, it was fun to whip it up tonight.

      For Someone Special (Revised 2013)
      Only two hearts that shall be
      Only waiting never to see
      Looking high, beauty I find
      Looking low, waiting to hold

      This rose I send bound by love
      Heart’s end it came from above
      Two in stride the one I find
      Bless the one I want to hold

      Hope to hope, holding to care
      To love you there is no err
      Blinding light prevents my find
      Struggling my grip to hold

      If you shall be ever near
      Still waiting for you my dear
      Through my love, it you will find
      Plainly, is the love to hold

    9. Congratulations on crafting such a moving story with such wonderful cadence and readability. Like I said, you are amazing.

      1. I really wasn’t bragging, I was just amazed that I actually did it. Stunned, actually, though I recall hours of banging my head against my desk.

    10. Gully,
      I never noticed the repetitions in this work until I went back and read your intro again. Even then, the power of the message still didn’t allow me to see them right away. Congratulations on constructing such a complicated form and still giving us such a strong story. Thanks for sharing this with us.
      Gale

    11. As usual, I’m coloring outside the lines. Following is my one and only attempt at writing a sestina. I know, I’d never heard of them either. It’s an esoteric poetic form that relies on a specific format:
      39 lines
      6 stanzas of six lines each
      followed by a 3-line stanza
      The words that end each line of the first stanza are used as line endings in each of the following stanzas, rotated in a set pattern.
      Those same six words also are used in the final 3-line stanza in a set pattern.

      Stumbling through the Alzheimer’s Memorial Garden

      Can’t you control him, angry eyes demand
      as he stumbles through the flowers. I will
      try to corral him before he tramples more,
      while a scream lies fallow in my heart.
      I’m too tired to care, whether about tomorrow
      or what they think. I’m just trying to cope.

      I wasn’t made for this, this trying to cope.
      My body’s strong but I fear these demands
      will diminish all my tomorrows,
      leaving nothing at the end, nor will
      I ever again find love in my heart,
      if it’s even in there any more.

      He sleeps. A couple hours or more
      of peace and silence, no thoughts of coping,
      a time for restoration that steels my heart
      to face the ever-increasing demands—
      feeding, bathing, and controlling that will
      get us through the day. Don’t think about tomorrow.

      What if, for him, there were no tomorrows?
      No more showers, no more shaves, no more
      dressing a resisting body whose will
      exhausts my sleep-starved ability to cope
      and whose cognitive outrages demand
      something that no longer lives in my heart.

      Where did the love go? I ask my heart.
      Is there a chance I’ll find it on some tomorrow?
      Is it lost in all the mind-numbing demands
      as plaques and shattered synapses take more
      of who he was? And now I have to cope
      with implementing his living will.

      I open his papers and turn to the will.
      I brace myself, ignore my leaden heart.
      I sign—no more drugs to help his body cope,
      But ease him into death on a fateful tomorrow.
      He’s forgotten how to walk and talk. Soon more
      Will be stolen by its insatiable demands.

      I dread all the tomorrows as I struggle to cope.
      I pray time will mend my wanting heart,
      And more: free me from these endless demands.

      (c) Gullible 2011 (as if anyone would want to plagiarize it)

        1. Fig, thanks. I’m far enough away from writing this that I can marvel at how I managed to put this word puzzle together and have it make sense. Do you see how each end word takes its time upon the stage, then drops to the next line? And the order of the six end words is quite specific in the final three-line stanza, as to which line contains which words. Fascinating little puzzle.

          As I reread it now, I occasionally stumble over the repetition. I think a good poet can write a sestina and the reader won’t even realize certain words are being repeated.

          I’ll bet you could…

    12. …And not goin’ nowhere near Oklahoma, where (I’m reliably informed) the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain when the corn is as high as an elephant’s eye.

      1. I wonder how they know that? Far as I know, elephants aren’t indigenous to Oklahoma and if they were, there darned sure wouldn’t be any corn left standing to measure.

        1. Actually, they have found mammoth bones just a few miles from my house. The big boys did roam here, pre-corn crop days.

      2. Fig
        Just discovered your blog(s)
        Excellent! Look forward to following..
        Gale

    13. I know there were a lot of tornados tossing things around in Oklahoma, but I’m pretty sure Walk is still in that state. Maybe he’s still in his ‘fraidy hole. Fig, on the other end of the world, IS in Australia. 😉

      1. Brain lock. I have a way to fix this, so I did. Thanks for the heads up.

        1. Well then, with your omnipotent ways, would you please go back to my Beyond My Ken, last stanza, change “rueful” back to “aching”. I like it better, the way I first wrote it in 1965. Please and thank you.

      2. Still around, wind blown but still standing. I haven’t had to jump in the ‘fraidy hole yet, but am sure glad it’s close by.

    14. Lost in America
      (–apologies to Fig Mince from Australia)

      You cannot tell just where to focus these days
      with bird flu in Europe, industrial haze.
      You drag yourself off to the job every morning
      to battle your staff and high blood pressure warnings.
      You might buy a gun. How else to react
      when buildings explode and your kid’s in Iraq?
      The wife’s on a diet (again), it’s her tenth
      and the Chinese are buying the next president.
      Your roof needs replacing and Christmas is coming.
      Your credit card bill won’t bear either; it’s numbing!
      But hey, you are lucky, you’re not blasted by storms
      like the folks who live where tornadoes eat farms.
      So what if the only clean water is bottled?
      It’s classy to drink trendy water and waddle
      around in your gym clothes to work out and sweat,
      though people are starving in Guam and Tibet.
      Ride your lawnmower around, cuz the treadmill, you know,
      will cut every threat of a heart attack blow.
      Our insurance won’t cover the cost of such health needs,
      so hope against hope that you’ll get a nice reprieve
      from aging, dementia, bad strokes, and the like.
      Maybe God can do something to prevent such a strike.
      Promise him money, good deeds, lots of prayers–
      perhaps he’ll take pity on you and your cares.
      Divine intervention. Now that’s just the ticket.
      Godly beings must now lead us out of this thicket.
      We’re tired of being confused and all scared again.
      We don’t deserve this; we’re righteous Americans!

      2. Um, re that ‘brain lock’, Ann – I’ve got a feeling you corrected your apology the wrong way around, intending it to be to Walk from Oklahoma (who we hope, is OK).

        1. Ah. Wait. Yes, I get it: I’m the odd one out. Excluded yet again, just because I’m a lefteous Australian. Story of my life.

          Except in this case, after re-reading the post, I’m not sure I mind.

        2. Fig, area you really lefteous? From where we stand, you seem to be leaning to the right.

    15. Writing verse
      Is a curse
      That’s made worse
      By me not having any sense of meter or noticing that I’ve transposed a ‘t’ in this final line which is about me only owning a couplet of shirs.

    16. On a lighter note:

      WRITING AS SUICIDE

      This stuff keeps pouring out of me,
      I fear it will never stop.
      I can’t do a single chore in my house
      Without triggering more of this slop.

      I studied feet and meter and rhyme,
      Yearning to write something better,
      But now I’ve come to the end of the line
      And why I’m writing this letter.

      Someday it will get the better of me,
      You’ll find me curled up in a ball.
      Oh, ’tis so sad, you’ll say over me,
      Poor Gullible’s had a fall.

      It wasn’t a fall at all, I will say,
      The words in my head drove me mad.
      Just think of the agony I’m going through,
      Writing verse that’s really this bad.

      I read the great poets every day,
      Studied sonnets and couplets and rhyme.
      I’ll never be listed with their worthy names,
      But the doggerel field is all mine!

    17. BEYOND MY KEN

      Would then that now I know,
      Need sorrow ever been?
      Need anguished tears been ever shed?
      These things, beyond my ken.

      The years do ease the hurt,
      and disburdened should I be,
      but heart and mind so seldom meet,
      that yet I think of thee.

      No day shall pass without
      an aching thought of then
      when love was new and so unwise,
      like now, beyond my ken.

      (c) Gullible 1965

    18. My silly attempt…

      The giant eyes unblinking stare.
      This webcam is freaky, do I dare,
      To place a covering over it?
      Unsettling me, there it sits.

      It’s hard to write under its glare
      My mind is wiped completely bare.
      How am I to find a rhyme that is fit,
      To set before their mighty wit?

      Oh muse, this is not fair,
      To be stuck with so little care.
      As I stew, having a fit,
      I spy a hammer…what a hit!

      4. You had fun with this, Lanyn. And I had fun reading it. I’d say your attempt was successful, not silly. Or should I say, silly AND successful!!

    19. “Voices of A Butterfly” by Deanna Washington Gregory

      They elegantly move
      Their colors so bright
      Not waiting for one to approve
      While they flutter in flight.

      Parading their patterns in style
      So careless and free
      We watch for awhile
      Seeing symmetry.

      Voices of a butterfly
      Are very unique
      Allowing us to identify
      As they do speak.

      3. I love this. You’ve convinced me that butterflies do speak. They speak of carefree and careless motion and beauty.

        Thanks, Deanna.

    20. I am not a poet
      And I know it

      Alfie knew very well why
      He was rewarded for a cry

      Benton always felt funny
      About having too much money

      And Frannie was the one
      Who in death looked after her hon

      When we sought characters in our psyche
      Jeff brought Godiva in on a trike

      At a challenge for 1000 words on the page,
      Gary, Gulli, Heather, Gale, and Pat were all the rage,
      And as the weeks wore on,
      We read Parrot, Jeff, Fig, Shaddy, Lisa and Marion
      But we were all put in our places
      With Ann’s touching story about a wall with faces.

      Be it Fiction, Humor or just Gallumping,
      This group of talented writers always comes a humping.

    21. Thanks Lanyn and Waldo. I wrote this after planning a week vacation with the kids and grandkids (12 of us) and realized I was so busy organizing it, I forgot to enjoy being there with everyone! Luckily I figured it out before the week was over.

      1. That sounds like me most of the time. Why is it so hard for some of us to live in the moment? I agree that we need to wring every bit of joy possible out of every single minute. Now if I could just do it!!

    23. Cherish all the moments
      Being with family and friends
      They go by in an instant
      On that you can depend

      Don’t just check something off
      As one more task that’s been done
      Because when you look back
      You may have missed all the fun.

      When I get super busy
      And make long lists
      I sometimes loose the real reason
      That being together exists

      I may have gone through the motions
      In an efficient way
      Only to find out later
      I missed the whole day

      A clever comment or antic
      By a grandchild or an adult
      A special feeling in the air
      With children’s laughter, the result

      I may have been too preoccupied
      With that and with this
      To enjoy the moment
      And embrace the bliss

      My lesson to you
      I share in this lament
      Hear it loud and clear
      For its truth is evident

      Learn to live in each moment
      Don’t waste any of its time
      Without enjoying it fully
      To do otherwise is a crime

      2. A universal truth ! Delightful poem . I think I will read iy every morning with my first cup of coffee..