Live Bait

Don’t drag me
through the mud
I don’t feed off
filth

I only bite
your wriggling worms

Wear your waders or
I’ll draw blood

You can try trolling
but your boat motor
leaks poison
into my tide

If your hook catches my gills,
release me

I’d rather die free
than in your ice-box

Reviews

[JayG]

• "Don’t drag me through the mud I don’t feed off filth"

1. So someone unknown is talking to someone not introduced about things they don't want to happen?

What's in it for the reader? Are you aching to find out the things I don't want someone to do?

That aside, poetry is NOT the author talking about their life, and what's bothering them, because readers want to be entertained, not learn about your woes. There's a LOT more to writing poetry. They have, after all, been refining and expanding those skills for centuries.

2. You've taken a short essay and broken into lines. But if that turned prose into poetry, EVERY piece of writing is a poem...which brings us back to the point above, and the need to dig into the skills of the profession.

It's not a matter of talent, it's that we can no more use the report-writing skills of school for poetry than can we perform surgery with the skills of Health Class.

So while I support and encourage your desire to write, I also have to suggest digging into the realities and fun of writing poetry, with a good book on the basics, like Mary Oliver's, A Poetry Handbook.

And for the nuance of metrical poetry, try the excerpt from Stephen Fry's, The Ode Less Traveled, on Amazon. Both will amaze you.