My Very Best Poem

This is my very best poem

Of all of my poems it’s the best

Ask anyone who knows of my work

It’s rock and boulders above the rest

Its rhythm moves slowly – like a river

Not showy, like a quick clever stream

Its metaphor glides

Like a swan on the tide

(Well, not a tide… but you know what I mean.)

Its rhymes are subtle, internal

Using assonance, half-rhyme and stuff

It’s a ripe, stripy apricot, its palate is delicate

But its meaning is Teflon and tough

At first sight this poem is simple

Like a long road that hasn’t a bend

But the story it tells soon begins ringing bells

Of heartbroken lives on the mend

Take Simon and Claire, for example

And their hopeless and doomed love affair

For he fooled around in his lair, underground

And she was a Chippendale chair

And yes, this poem is nonsense

But – and this is the crucial bit –

At its heart there is… um… heart, and at its feet there’s a beat

And, as poems go, well, it is my best