Short Untitled Poems

Patiently waiting
for nothing to happen again.
Anticipating
and quietly sucking my pen.

I was the poet
who was going to write your diary
for tomorrow
but you raised your pen
for a full stop.
Period.

Sitting on a stump in the classroom
thinking
like a dog after a hard day's work
or dreaming
like a madman
greeting a long-lost friend
who still
hasn't
come
back.

I have waited days
the few minutes
it must have seemed
to you.

Give me a fiver
I'll write you a song,
value as stated above.
At least worth the paper it's written upon,
not simply dashed off for love.
Consider the hours it takes to inspire
any verse of such metre and rhyme.
I offer you this at a pitiful price.
What better to do with my time?

I miss the bliss
of hypomanic highs,
its passionate certainty,
climactic proximity to truth,
unlimited energy of youth.
What right has sanity to steal
insightful,
delightful,
forthright zeal?

A rabbit in his wollen jacket
sitting in the sun,
chewing on a daisy 'till his crazy chewing's done.
My mind is full of poetry,
my world is full of prose.
I wouldn't have it otherwise,
it keeps me on my toes.

Remember consultants can never be wrong.
If you're lucky they'll listen and string you along.
But if when you argue it gets too intense
they'll give you a label of manic defence.

The world of feel is no more real
than the world of sight and sound.
So why, with such strong passion,
do we tout our map around?

Defining Words

Someone prolixed just this verse
They've smitten it with wordy curse,
with tedious, tiresome textual tricks
to aid-memoir the word 'prolix'.

This is a book of exiguos verse.
It isn't much but it could be worse.

A sussurus is all around,
a tinitus of whispered sound,
a hushed and rustling nebulas
to help remember sussurus.

When we converse tac-au-tac
you swiftly block and parry back,
as if my words are sharp attack
and yours are self defence.

Immured within this verse
I immolate my lot,
immanently here expressed
or imminently just forgot.
Immediately immortal,
immodest I am not.

I really am extemporare,
nobody gave me a thought.
It would have been grand
if my life had been planned.
Well, you'd think that my parents ought.

A poundal is the certain force,
or so my dictionary reckoned,
to accelerate a pound of weight
by one foot per second per second.

A pouter is a pigeon,
a common domestic breed
that puffs its crop on a chimney top
when it wants to sow its seed.

There you sit, my innocent friend,
initially tabula rasa
until I pour some doggerel in
or other things less crasser.

Hapology in verse ain't great
but nor is it a crime.
Sometimes the words deteriate
to fit the rythm and rhyme.

Sometimes writing poetry
you've got to make a decision
to leave a vowel or syllable out
with careful use of elision.

What is meant by 'quartic'?
Why are you asking me?
Find a mathematician
and give him the fourth degree!

This
poem
is
emaciated,
short
and
sweet
and
understated

- by Prajna Pranab, various dates