I Write Very Bad Poetry

I write very bad poetry
about fights I never fought
and girls I only sort of liked

I mix metaphors like swirling paint
setting up the dominoes
and watching them fall like a house of cards

I saddle my pawn-like nouns
with churlish adjectives
until they forget the person, place, or thing they once were

My verbs are lavishly garbed in adverbial robes
dancing ghoulishly
in the transitive light

I sidestep fields of cliched words
like heart, and darkness, and night
because such words cast a shadow over my soul

I use punctuation; in unusual places
I drop comma bombs and end
lines in the middle of

I can rhyme, though I
don’t love it. I feel my style
is well above it. Do you like enjambment too?

I can plod along in iambic pentameter
but nothing rhymes with iambic pentameter
except maybe flyamric plemtamater

I weave words together for impact
playing fast and loose with syntax
my rhyming scheme to keep intact

I stumble across some clarity
in my worn-through pages of Ariel
and let those words work through my pencil

Until allusion becomes larceny
Though they always knew it was you
Poetry, poetry, you fool, I’m through.