Composing poetry: rhyming is winning

By Doug Thompson

Writing poetry is something I have done for most of my life. I suppose I should say composing poetry actually, because for many years I hardly ever wrote it down. The way this works is that you compose a poem while you are busy doing something else, working for instance, then if it is any good you will remember it the next day, then after going over it a few times in your head you will inevitably make a few changes and if they are any good you will remember them the next day.

After a while, you forget the original poem and even the inspiration behind it in the first place. However, you will like the resulting poem so much that you will remember it.

I always do rhyming poetry although it’s not very fashionable these days. People often frown upon poetry, with some suggesting it’s primitive and birthday-cardish, but rhyming poetry is easy to remember and stands the test of time.

In fact, rhyming is a good substitute for writing in the days when most ordinary people were illiterate. A story set to rhyme could be rememered and recited by anybody and shared among the community.

Do you have a favourite poem from childhood that you have committed to memory? I bet it rhymes.

Filling out a Form

A spider landed on a form, with ink upon its feet

it wandered back and forth, across the printed sheet

it tarried a few moments, in a box marked sign your name

and then scuttled off the desk, and was never seen again

so the form was now official, being signed and all complete

with a certain legal status, imparted by the spiders feet

but nobody could read it, it was causing quite a stir

though they all agreed it must be read, a meeting would concur

a committee was appointed, at considerable expense

to read the confounded document, and extract from it some sense

they meet once a month at 10am to bring their expenses sheet

and they have some tea and biscuits and arrange when they next meet

but none of them has noticed yet, that little cause celeb

a spider chuckling to himself, you should post it on the web.

Lava tube

Born in a raging inferno, where torture and torment were rife

I can see the scars of creation, where this passage I walk, came to life

And to walk inside a volcano, in this truly magnificent place

It’s a joy to behold liquid rock, frozen in time and space

I imagine the sounds of eruption, the roar of a mountain enraged

Where boulders were floating in lava, where the power of the earth was un-caged

Yet now so tranquil and silent, a labyrinth of dreams to explore

In a fossilised moment in time, a record of what went before

But dare I look to the future, when the mountain spews fire again

And these tunnels will flow with liquid once more, and the sky will host molten rain.