Whereas previously free verse was, as they say, my bag, I've tried to write more structured verse, as I find it forces me to think carefully, not only about how to express, but what it is that's being expressed. Free verse is both intimidating and encourages laziness. Intimidating in that it offers no guidelines to structure, and presents no 'easy way in'; laziness-encouraging in that, in having no specific meter or structure to refer to, what is written is written with less. So, I've taken to structure, with rhyme, half-rhyme and everything. The Ode Less Travelled was, actually, very very helpful in this.
So here's an effort I thought I'd share - comments and critiques are greatly appreciated.
The Butchers
The doorway is hanging with bright steel chains,
Many ranks of them, to keep out the flies
But to permit the stumbling forays
Of shoppers in; plucking sleeves, blinking eyes
Blearily in the sudden dim. Behind glass
Lie butchered swads in mortuary banks
While we the bereaved, like new mums and dahs
Assemble, point, adopt them from their tanks.
Turning, I am arrested briefly by
The movements of the chains: the lower ends
Are ankle high, and are ceaselessly swinging;
The upmost links are still. So seeing, one might
Ascend the road from which our lives depend,
Back and back and back, to their still beginnings.
