In the style of the Sapphic Ode - 3 eleven syllable lines, followed by 1 five syllable line. 

(Compare with ‘On this day I compare with my thirty-sixth year’ by Lord Byron. 8,8,8,5.)

****

 

Get me a stick, I’ll browbeat each one of them,

Elegant-clumsy, inviting or snobbish, 

Noon and night these words keep tugging at my hem,

vexatious rubbish.

 

Penitent Ms Magdalene weeps in mural

Thus maudlin is overly sentimental

On religion, Laodicean’s frugal,

not at all anal. 

 

Avuncular is uncle-ly, genial and kind

Diverse duties reside with a factotum

In need is indigent, for he’s in a bind,

fire’s under his bum. 

 

A string of M’s I now pick up, Monism’s first-

Ultimacy of a single principle

Micawberish, wretched, hopes with ceaseless thirst,

endearing, simple.

 

Through repeated ticks metronome counts a spell

But metonym’s just a word substitution

‘Suits’ stands-in for ‘executives’, easy to tell

what’s the intention.

 

I wonder what they’ll do with my poetry

Rewrite over it, use it like palimpsest?

Will it cause paroxysms, be shunned by gentry,

and also the rest?

 

Will they find it purulent, full up with pus?

It may rouse stupor, make them soporific

But there’s a small hope that my magnum opus

is termed terrific!

 

Will they use these to adduce my craziness,

Or politely wait for the peroration?

For some time I pray, stick with the clumsiness

of my creation.

 

Making a few abstracts concrete, is Reify

There’s no scope for subterfuge or chicanery

Concupiscence - strong desire one can’t defy,

So just make merry!

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