Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Muldoon

How brash, how bold--
you brandish your dictionary
like a buckler slung low
on your almost feline hip
on your almost female hip.
Come at me again with your
whin, and gorse, and furze.
Tell me of the swamp grass under which
you saw me lying, saw me loving
and how it bristled in thorny ceiling
to shield me from the sky, the sun
but not from you with your rapier of incisive verbs.
Tell me that you saw it as rape, as racking, as wrath
and you shall say it so in print, in verse, in rhyme.
Load up your derringer of daring with your pocket of metaphors
and fire scattershot after your ten paces of nobility.
This is after all a matter of honor, a dishonorable matter.

How bold you are and brash
to accuse me by the whin, the gorse, the furze.
I tell you-- you shall need more than
one witness by three names.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

This poem doesn't ryhme.

May-Belle said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
May-Belle said...

You are correct. It's not necessary for free verse to rhyme, or 'ryhme'.

oh look, stars! said...

" How bold you are and brash
to accuse me by the whin, the gorse, the furze.
I tell you-- you shall need more than
one witness by three names. "

I really enjoyed reading it!

I'm perplexed with the title though..

May-Belle said...

This poem is a semi-response poem to Paul Muldoon's 'Incantata'. He was frustrating me as well as a couple of double-standard gender moral codes that had come up over the last few days.

Thanks for the compliment- they make my day.

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