~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Paul Kohnhorst

Sonnet Noir

Film world of tropes: mean city, life is cheap

Fedoras, suits, guns; night’s streetlights in rain

Crass cynics joke in morgue; some sap's big sleep

Femme fatale’s greed, patsy’s lust gets him slain

Flophouse room, neon flashes, men sweat, smoke,

An anti-hero strives, fights, loses game

Nihilists all, with moral compass broke

Where modern Angst, war's terrors haunt each frame

I shoot life’s horrors on dark dreamlike sets,

My mind’s camera, skewed in Dutch angle,

Captures spot lit players—while psyche gets

Expressionist symbols to untangle

Sick Climate, war, plague, white thugs rule the right

This World’s a Film Noir: stark, grim, black and white

I Won’t Write This Poem

I cannot do a form poem. I just won’t write

bland, sterile works governed by arbitrary rules,

those museum pieces, dusty, dated and trite.

Free verse! No constraints! Words dancing nimble and light.

Write what I know, mine my dark psyche for jewels.

I cannot do a form poem. I just won’t write

dull, lifeless works like those sleepy students recite

in hoary patriarchal forms long taught in schools,

those museum pieces, dusty, dated and trite.

Though bounds on rhyme, meter, length—which seem a sad plight—

trim waste, boost metaphors, and sharpen poets’ tools,

I cannot do a form poem. I just won’t write

counting beats, wracking my brain for a rhyme just right

to paint word pictures, show passion that never cools.

Those museum pieces <dusty, dated and trite>

include great art produced by geniuses despite

firm structures and norms; those ancient bards were no fools.

I cannot do a form poem. I just won’t write

works like timeless classics: brilliant, filled with insight.

Paul Kohnhorst took early retirement from a career of technical work in order to pursue creative endeavors, travel, and do volunteer work. He then ran headlong into a global pandemic. He recently relocated to Oregon after a life spent mostly in the Midwest. Since then he has been reveling in the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest while enjoying his hobbies of hiking, film, pickleball, cooking, reading, and writing.