I long to catch a poem\'s tail just to hear it wail
verse with soft paws, rhyme with teeth and clause
some are classical purebred others wild prose naturally bred
dark or pale with a scraggling tail
body of nouns, feet of verbs that an adjective\'s shadow disturbs
I love mangling its participle dangling
with conjunctions of fur, how seductively they purr
she\'s measured in meter I wouldn\'t mistreat her
their subordination hides in shade of coordination
baited with a preposition revealing its past condition
rare creatures of a bard\'s work, in word\'s forest they lurk
its syntax presently tense, with muscular metaphors so dense
here a grammatical growl becomes an etymological howl
as by tongue assisted, poetry\'s tail is twisted