Put it up to eleven

Two band mates arguing over a chord. True story and probably one repeated every night at some rehearsal somewhere. It’s the temperament of art. I like 'em metrical with a little rhyme and the next poet wants them prosy and disjunctive. But imagine if we were writing poems together. Poet bands across America arguing over an iamb. Fighting over a line beak. Walking out over a fragmented sentence. It probably happens every night.

Disbanding Number One

They bicker over chords.
The singer hears the C
like crafts that brave the plains
before idolatry
nailed the golden spikes.
It’s not that he dislikes

this unpretentious G
the lead guitarist plays
with Warren Harding pluck,
but that was yesterday’s
administrative style.
It’s time the mercantile

appointments followed suit.
He’ll run an inside straight
against a pair of Jacks
and let the second-rate
profess their misery.
He needs no harmony.

Something took hold of me on this one and I went along for the ride, enjoying it tremendously. It’s been some time that I let my imagination take free rein within a metrical framework. The formalism of form has been chafing at me lately. Too many workshop priests and not enough sinners. I understand their arguments and all. The sonnet requires its volta. But I need some voltage sometimes. "Eleven. Exactly. One louder."