Poetry - All Dressed up with Some Place to Go - two poems

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Poetry – Dressed up with Some Place to Go

A poem need not be so overdressed
That it embarrasses free-verse poseurs
Awash in self-absorbed, self-pitying tears
The sound of one first-person pronoun clapping

But still they should be instructed

That a poem is not about the poet
It is about the reader who has turned
His attention and the writer’s pages
To the existential questions of life

And so is properly dressed for its work



Poetry – Slouched in a Chambray Shirt and Old Khakis

Dude! Slack me some slack here - my weekend words
Deserve to wear the untied sneakers of life
Kicked back, kicked up, with a cosmic crossword
To puzzle out with coffee and iambic-free buttered toast of indeterminate
scansion and crumbs

Since scribblers should be comforted

For a poem is about the poet too
Turning his thoughts and the reader’s pages
To those same questions, but with half-and-half
Sloshed into both the coffee and one’s art

And so is properly dressed for the porch