Member Poem

What happened to metre and feet?
Why how and when did the poets abandon them?

Were the strictures too tight?
Did they suffocate their flights
Of fancy?

Did the imagery find
the stranglehold of an iamb
or a trochee too tight?

And in escaping the murderous attempt
Of rhythm
Did it fly unfettered
Discovering new skies, new heights, new ways to argue with words

To lament lost loves
Lost verse?

Were Alexandrines and Pentameters
Too stuffy and too closed?

And did the Open form
The caged bird expose?
Although that one sang in rhyme.

And she whose eyes
Hard as crushed diamonds
Transformed the form
And then escaped through the oven

What, then from that yeast did rise?
A bubble to annihilate
All bombs.