Wednesday 21 July 2010

Villanelle Competition Entry: One

Our online villanelle competition opened this week, and each entrant's poem will be published here in the coming week. There's still time to enter - check the terms and conditions. Some stellar efforts are coming in! Here's a taster ...

Porlock’s Warning to all Poets


Imagine this: midday, a heavy door knock
drags him cursing from his bed of rhyme
to find me standing tugging at my forelock

asking that a gent like him put more stock
on paying for his opiates on time.
Imagine this: midday, a heavy door knock.

He lets me in. I gasp. O what a raw shock
to stumble on a scene of occult crime:
a poet, red-eyed, raving like a warlock

about a sunless sea. I feel the floor rock
and pray to God that He will be on time
to give the poet a mighty case of jaw-lock.

He was. And did. Now here I am, poor Porlock,
cursed to live until the end of time,
as the man who shut up Coleridge with word block.

So. A warning to all poets: Get a door lock
if you wish to undertake a life of rhyme.
Imagine this: midnight, a heavy door knock.
You find me standing, tugging at my forelock…

The Person from Porlock

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