Halloween Sonnet Contest: A Poet, Alex Rettie

 Alex Rettie is the EIC of Poems for Persons of Interest.

A Late Poet

“Poet” was his chosen self-description,
and what he wrote was not entirely bad.
If he had chosen “lover,” “friend,” or “dad,”
the turn-out at the funeral reception
might have been more than it turned out to be.
But beggars can’t be choosers, as they say,
and he had spent each day on broken day
a beggar for attention. “Look at me!”
“Look, please!” was all the tenor of his verse.
“I need, I need,” in neat iambic feet
until his oeuvre’s whining was complete
and life declined from bearable to worse.
The few his singing gave some minor joy
soon quite forgot the sad, old, mannish boy.

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