Poem About Writing A Poem

Poem About Writing A Poem



'Write A Poem,' she says
'About anything you like.'
You can practically feel the class all thinking,
'On your blooming bike!'
A poem! I'll tell you one thing:
Mine's not going to rhyme.
A poem between now and playtime!
There's not the time.
In half an hour, she'll say,
'Have you done? Hand papers in
And go out.'
I mean, does she have the slightest idea
What writing a poem's about?
I mean, it's agony:
It's scribbling thoughts
And looking for rhymes
And ways to end and begin;
And giving up in total despair -
'I'm chucking it in the bin.'
But tomorrow it pulls you back again,
And hey, a bit of it clicks!
And you sweat with the words
But it's hopeless again
And it sticks.
And you put it away forever....

But it nags away in the back of your head
And the bits of it buzz and roam,
And maybe - about a century later -
You've got a kind of poem.




by Eric Finney