Death of Poetry
I clothe with erudite words
an idea or experience
I want to preserve in words.
I strive for evanescent truth
In simile and rhyme.
Through valued processes
of reflection and revelation
I refine expressions, avoid excess,
evoke vivid imagery, excise cliché
and eliminate redundancies.
Another reread, another edit.
Erase extras, extinguish extremes,
elicit the elemental!
Expunge adolescent rhythm
from this poem of mine.
And like the shy thylacine
in the Tasmanian wilderness,
by my own hand,
before my own eyes
the poem evolves to extinction.
—Kaye Aldenhoven
Trying to . . .
Although I am inspired to write a sonnet
I'll have to stick to free verse
because the rhymes I pull together
don't say much and sound even worse.
—Kaye Aldenhoven