Alas! for Unrequited Love

[Animus Seed]

Alas for Fernando,
that the lovely maid believes him a brute.
Still, I will not abandon hope
that one day this maid will come to love me,
This lovely lady
Named "Poetry."

She speaks in words that paint images upon the sky,
that imprint onto memory
and drive the dreams of the many.

Is it not for me, then?
Will I not feel the caress of a muse?
Will my tongue not speak in flowered lyric,
and my pen only babel?
Is it not to be,
that I might compel men to dream while yet awake?

Or will these words fade after so short a time
Without even a corny, half-decent rhyme?

Not for me, rhyme and meter.
But oh, how do I long for my dear Sestina!
Instead, rather
For all my effort
These words seem but prose
Arbitrarily divided into lines.

Does she think me unfaithful,
For my experience with Miss Prose?
I assure thee, Madame Poetry
My pen is chaste.
So come to me now,
You who came to both Poe and Homer,
made a boy into a Baisho,
and made Mr. Greenleaf wittier.

Alliterate, alliterate, alliterate
Until lines begin to blur under the strain of it
and all seem
illiterate.

I take some comfort
In this at least: I'm not all
That bad at haiku.