I would like to thank you for your kind words, Raven, and to commend you on such an inspiring thread. How else shall we have coaxed such a wonderful array of contributions (and they are all of them marvelous)? Well done. Like Dalien, your brief lines have left me eager for a more substantial taste of your work. Whatever it is expressing, be it humor or tragedy, joy or sorrow, poetry is truly the stuff of life.
Though I have never really studied it, and make innumerable mistakes (is there a correct way?), I wrote a considerable amount of poetry in my youth, though I have now turned more toward prose as my chosen medium of expression. Nevertheless, I do have a few poems scattered here and there, and I still churn out the occasional humorous poem when I am sufficiently inspired. Alas, the muse becomes ever more difficult to invoke with each passing year. Just lately she has become mired in the everyday trivialities of life; buried under layer upon layer of worry, apathy, and ennui.
Here is a poem I wrote for another forum some years ago. It is inspired by Speak Like a Pirate Day. Mundane? Perhaps. Fun to write? Without a doubt. Who can say from whence inspiration strikes?
The Ballad of the Reluctant Bride
Draw near and hear this legend true,
Of Zasha Alaboard.
The rudest, crudest pirate shrew,
To ever wield a sword.
Brassy, sassy, full of pluck,
A brigand to the last.
Duly unruly and blessed with luck,
From main to mizzen-mast.
Tameless, shameless, no man could catch,
This saucy harridan.
Until her will did meet its match-
A lubbin’ justice man!
While at trial, they met and rhymed,
And formed a splendid bundle.
With glee he freed her of her crime,
And bore her off to trundle.
Gooseflesh broke fresh upon her neck,
He proved both spry and limber.
With care quite rare he swabbed her deck,
And shivered every timber.
“Ahoy!” with joy she cried and wept,
Glad tears upon the bed.
Cockcrow, day glow, they hadn’t slept,
Zasha agreed to wed.
And now the vows are written out,
A telling testimony,
The nights’ delights distract her from,
Impending matrimony.
Grounded, bounded, her soul decays,
Her heart is still alee.
Engaged, encaged, she spends her days,
In longing for the sea.
At last, too fast, the day arrives,
Her cheek the sun does kiss.
And then her skin breaks into hives,
To think of landlocked bliss.
The morn with scorn she greets and yawns,
Her freedom is fast fading.
The first, the worst of many dawns,
She’ll go no more a-raiding.
The brine it pines within her veins,
Her courage it is failing.
It yearns, it burns for soft sea rains
She’d rather be a-sailing.
With haste not waste, she takes to flight,
And quickly steals away.
A sail unveiled, a distant sight,
She hurries to the bay.
The groom presumes when he returns,
To find an anxious bride.
Instead, she‘s fled he finds and learns,
The betrothal’s been denied.
The moral‘s floral, and here it goes:
It’s impossible indeed,
To sow and grow a gentle rose,
From a wildflower seed.
