The Modern Ships Retreat from Searching for the Golden Fleece

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem 

The word ship he is making is a war

Machine upon the sea of poetry.

The battles are between him and a corps

Of gun ships that do not love poetry.

In hate they are destroyers.  They, because

Their minds are full of fear, attack the great

Armadas sailed before them and would hawse

Them into harbors or a sealed up strait.

The Modern battleships despise the power

Of galleons and the triremes of the past

Because gray metal knows that it must cower

When larger admiral brains stand by each mast.

  The cowards fear that they cannot compete

    And so they write in free verse, bleat, bleat, bleat.

~ Phillip Whidden