a little to and fro for H. Jerome Alter

“Wherefore my rhymes oft decorate the page,
When others ’round, this virtue e’er forsake?
Wherefore past giants of this noble art
Employ this modus in their grandest works?”

“Or is it anything a writer pens,
With rhythm, rhyme, and context undefined?
Dear reader, now your choice is icy clear;
The pow’r is yours to foreordain!”

by H. Jerome Alter

to H. Jerome Alter

Whereas you mock the grandest greats:
Walt Whitman, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath
and for heaven’s sake the many
alive and well and writing yet still…

mind the mind that binds one to do
another’s will
thru trickry via word skills

oh doth you dare claim
old Reason(s) as thy own
i.e. with “certainity”
“if you exercise you end up healthy”

penned words may touch a human heart
to soothe, to leap, to fly
but only if and forever still
when heart freely sings.