May 2019
Note: Sometimes it’s true that the best poems you hear at a poetry reading are part of the Open Mic— no matter who the featured readers are. Here’s a poem that speaks to that. Note that it’s a ballade, with three rhymes and a repeated refrain at the end of each of the 8-line stanzas. But you knew that. [ not me! -FF ]
Ballade of the Open Mic
~ AN OPEN MIC WILL FOLLOW TONIGHT’S POETRY ~
—Bookshop poster
O will you won’t you join the gang
down at the books-and-java store
where browsers browse and poets hang?
We long to greet you at the door
and steer you to the second floor
where we’ll festoon the atmosphere
with rhythm, rhyme, and metaphor—
the poems you didn’t know you came to hear!
Linger for the whole shebang,
and get more than you bargained for!
Poems in Spanish, poems in slang,
ripe confessionals galore,
piles of sex (please don’t keep score),
and now and then a sonneteer
will show you why you can’t ignore
those incandescent poems you need to hear!
And if some old orangutang
has rescued from a dresser drawer
his strange pentameter harangue,
or some benighted sophomore
reveals her fling in Singapore—
five minutes and they’re outta here,
making way for lines that soar:
the kind you’ve waited far too long to hear!
You simply can’t go home before
we breathe our blessings in your ear—
our songs of the unsung troubadour,
the poems we know you really came to hear!
Ballade of the Open Mic
~ AN OPEN MIC WILL FOLLOW TONIGHT’S POETRY ~
—Bookshop poster
O will you won’t you join the gang
down at the books-and-java store
where browsers browse and poets hang?
We long to greet you at the door
and steer you to the second floor
where we’ll festoon the atmosphere
with rhythm, rhyme, and metaphor—
the poems you didn’t know you came to hear!
Linger for the whole shebang,
and get more than you bargained for!
Poems in Spanish, poems in slang,
ripe confessionals galore,
piles of sex (please don’t keep score),
and now and then a sonneteer
will show you why you can’t ignore
those incandescent poems you need to hear!
And if some old orangutang
has rescued from a dresser drawer
his strange pentameter harangue,
or some benighted sophomore
reveals her fling in Singapore—
five minutes and they’re outta here,
making way for lines that soar:
the kind you’ve waited far too long to hear!
You simply can’t go home before
we breathe our blessings in your ear—
our songs of the unsung troubadour,
the poems we know you really came to hear!
© 2019 Marilyn L. Taylor
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -FF