New Poetry Form - The Big Boss

I may have invented a new poetic form. It may have been used by other poets, but I can't recall seeing it anywhere else. It certainly seems a bit too good for me to have stumbled upon it all by myself, but I thought I'd codify it here in this blog post, so other poets can have a go at doing it too. I call it 'The Big Boss', because, well, it's my form, and I can call it what I like. It goes like this:

• 4 stanzas, 7 lines in each stanza
• 4 syllables in the first six lines of each stanza, and 6 syllables in the final line
• rhyme scheme is ABCBDBE, FGHGIGE, JKLKMKE, NOPOQOE.

Here are a couple of examples of Big Boss Poems. See if you can give it a go yourself (you can adjust the syllable count in some lines in order to maintain a consistent beat). I've found it to be a very effective technique when writing for younger children.

Tell it to the Dog

If you have had

an awful day

and all your woes

won’t go away

and no one wants

to come and play,

just tell it to the dog.

If everybody

picks on you

and all your plans

have fallen through;

if you feel lonely,

sad and blue,

just tell it to the dog.

They do not judge.

They understand.

They rub your leg.

They lick your hand.

If you feel lost

in no-man’s land

just tell it to the dog.

They keep your secrets

safe within.

They don’t care if

you lose or win.

So turn that frown

into a grin

and tell it to the dog!

 

The Day the Poet Came

The windows burped,

the hamster flew,

the walls spun round,

the grass turned blue,

things happened that

we never knew

the day the poet came.

 

The sky fell in,

the clouds dispersed,

the devils smiled,

the angels cursed,

the world inhaled,

began to burst

the day the poet came.

 

My desk became

a sailing boat,

an oak tree grew

inside my coat,

my friend got married

to a goat

the day the poet came.

 

The carpet turned

into a bath,

I think I saw

a pink giraffe,

but the strangest thing:

our teacher laughed

the day the poet came!

A Poem about Death

If Only

people spoke of the living

like they speak of the dead.

Just imagine:

people would go around declaring

how wonderful everyone else is;

how kind they are;

how, in spite perhaps

of outward appearances,

their hearts are made of gold.

People would cherish urns

of dandruff and nail clippings;

forgive each other almost anything;

treat each bad word as sacrilege.

Everyone would go out of their way

to attend the birthday parties

of distant relatives, declaiming it

“the right thing to do.”

Just think:

living itself would become an achievement.

The news would be a rolling dispatch

of everyone who made it through the day,

and when they died

we’d realise

that they weren’t that great anyway.

'Stuff' - new poem

Stuff

Miranda likes to point stuff out.

Walking hand in hand with her down the street

she’ll note the colours of the blossoming trees,

or a bird sitting high up on some branch,

or the interesting billowing of the clouds.

I don’t notice these things. Never have.

When I tell Miranda this she says

“you’re supposed to be a poet”, and I reply

that the only thing more boring than nature

is nature poetry. She smiles

and the pixels of her hand sink through mine

like sand through a funnel. She dissipates;

the street sucks up every trace of her.

“Was her name even Miranda anyway?” I ask

as I watch the pavement’s sutured lips

where a small, white flower grows.