Here is a recent 'concrete poem' I did for the March Poetry Madness at the ThinkKidThink.com site. The poem was specifically written to accommodate the assigned word for the tournament 'concurrent'.
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Train Wreck
by Vikram Madan
My poem wasn't very tight – a word slipped
out and fell
It landed on the line below and ruptured
that as well
What opus could withstand the weight of
words with such impact?
My rhymes were shaky from the start, but
now my structure cracked!
The meter flailed, the rhythm quailed, the
syllables played dead
Concurrent with this brouhaha, the verses
cursed and fled
More lines caved in…! More words fell
through…! The end is nigh, I guess
I hope you’ll still make some sense of this
train wreck of a mess.
My poem wasn't very tight – a word slipped out and fell
It landed on the line below and ruptured that as well
What opus could withstand the weight of words with such impact?
My rhymes were shaky from the start, but now my structure cracked!
The meter flailed, the rhythm quailed, the syllables played dead
Concurrent with this brouhaha, the verses cursed and fled
More lines caved in…! More words fell through…! The end is nigh, I guess
I hope you’ll still make some sense of this train wreck of a mess.
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A "concrete poem" is one where the physical structure of the written words give shape to the poem, an idea I took quite literally. However fixing word formats on web pages is very tricky - can you spot the simple trick I used to make sure the words show up in all the right places?
