Today’s prompt was to write a poem that uses a repeating phrase and then goes on to contradict itself.

You call yourself a poem?

Look at you.  Your lines are

stubby and you lack

imagery.  The reference

you make to the peach

is too soft, too sweet, its

sides mushy and shapeless.

You call yourself a poem?

Take a good long look at

your form.  It’s as brittle

as a dead tree.  If you ever tried

to hold an idea, your

branches would just sn-ap.

You call yourself a poem?

Where is the beauty? I can

see the cracks, now where is

the light? The words that form

you have been scraped from

underneath a mossy rock.

You call yourself a poem?

Shake yourself down.

Adjust your ideas.  Take

this graveyard of broken

phrases and dig it over.

Mosaic the words until

it gives us something

that feels more like truth.