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Poetry Club
What I want in a poetry club,
Bactine and bandages for everyone.
I want fist fights to erupt,
nouns thrown hard as a punch,
upper-cut adjectives to stagger
metaphors,
chairs tossed at lack of rhyme,
cat calls at over reliance on simile,
raspberries to blat loud
over unpronounceable words,
sneers, with middle fingers attached
at awkward turns of phrase,
verbal abuse
for lines
that leap into your lap
like bad dogs with muddy paws,
stanzas that float like bees and
sting like butterflies.
Kicked shins over the improper use of
the semi-colon;
members are to stack poetic sounding words
on their shoulders
like Pringles,
dare someone
to knock them off.
Nobody leaves without a bruised ego,
or a proud new shiner,
the stamina to go a rondelet.
This won’t be a tea party
but a knockdown drag out
bard room brawl.
- Harold Shaefer
Harold J. Schaefer, (pen name, H. John Schaefer) writes poems, fiction and essays. He earned a BA in Fine Arts and English from Indiana University and an MAEd from IUPUI. His poems have appeared in Stoney Lonesome, Indiana Writes, Alkahest, Indy METRO’s Poetry on the Buses, and other publications, and have been included in INverse, Indiana’s poetry archive. He lives in Greenfield, Indiana.