This was meant to be a performance piece. But, well 2020 happened. There’s nowhere to perform…

I don’t write poetry

As you can see

All that ‘Iambic Pentameter’

Just isn’t for me

I did. For my degree

Write a poem or three

But now I don’t write poetry

Can’t get my head round rhyme

And splitting ideas

Across lines wastes my time

I prefer to write prose, free flowing and loose. I break up my sentences. To short. Sharp. Fragments. To make my reader. Breathless. To show pace. 

Or I write long, detailed, sentences, with lots of sub clauses, so that the reader has to concentrate, or to slow down the pace, to hide the murderer’s identity in a clause so complex the reader has forgotten by the time they get to the end, and has to read to the reveal. 

I can start a new paragraph with a new idea, not just when I’ve hit the beat. 

Then another one. Which jars, because it’s incomplete.

No I don’t write poetry

As you can see

Well, maybe the odd Haiku

Cos I understand

Five syllables, then 

Seven in the second line

Five more to complete. 

© Chris Johnson 2020.