Yes, I've had problems
(with my poetry).
At first my difficulties
were (you might say) thematic,
recurring mentions of housework,
children (usually my children),
and then came the business
with the commas
(their hideous proliferation),
and now this (last?) difficulty
that I am unable (unwilling?)
to deal with -- oh, I've tried,
have managed (on occasion)
to write two (maybe three) poems
without resorting to parenthetical asides,
their gentle curvaceous diffidence
so reassuring to me (so irresistible!),
quite a different matter
from those straitlaced devils
the square brackets: [],
but I know I must stop
or (failing that) must at least learn
(if I am not too old to learn
(and how old would that be?))
how to punctuate them correctly).)(

(First published in Green Hills Literary Lantern)

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