Free Verse Poem by Elia Michael

I thought of trying to write a poem
Without rhyme and regular rhythm
With lines of unequal length
A much freer form of poetry

But as I write I ask is this just prose
Set out on the page
To make it look like a poem?
It is a difficult question to answer

Someone said that writing a poem
In free verse is like playing tennis without a net
I think it was Robert Frost
And I understand exactly what he means

I suppose we all have ideas on what a poem should be
Something grand perhaps like revealing some universal truth
Perhaps love or the human condition
Or to honour great deeds or sacrifice
Or timeless beauty or even ugly reality
Any subject really

And we expect to see (and hear)
These ideas formed into a poem
Which rhymes
And has a heartbeat rhythm
And is made up of lines of equal syllabic length
And put into nice neat stanzas

These are some of the rules
These are some of the boundaries
Artificial some say
As if free verse is not

You can see that although I have tried
To write in free verse I find it difficult
To get away from the conventional layout
Of a poem

I do not know
I think I need to write more free verse
But at this particular moment
I am more inclined towards traditional form