This is a Clerihew: A poem about an individual, usually famous person, using that person’s name in the rhyme scheme.
Named after its inventor, Edmund Clerihew Bentley.
I wrote this about the first random bit of celebrity news I found.

That tireless force of nature called Madonna
Has bagged herself another music honour:
She’s had more albums reach the top than Elvis –
The King is Dead: Long Live The Reigning Pelvis!

Epigrams aren’t always poems, but they often are, and usually take the form of a pithy rhyming couplet with a sting in the tail.
This one is more rueful and pensive than I intended, but it has a bit of a Dorothy Parker vibe, which I like.

The Flaw In Nostalgia

Missing your love is twice as hard to bear
Knowing that what I miss was never there.

For April Fool’s Day, here is a simple but macabre verse form called the Little Willie. This one is for Caroline, and her helpful “natural hair colouring” advice.
Oh, happy NaPoWriMo everybody! Good luck!

Sarah’s hair is turning grey

And so she’s been convinced to try

To boil her head in woad all day.

Oh Sarah dear, it’s time to dye!

This is a Kyrielle, another French troubadour type poetry form. It’s basically a hymn with a refrain concerning divine mercy. I’m agnostic and don’t particularly chime well with Christianity, but this shows my religious standpoint in a Christian context, because it’s an intrinsically Christian verse form.

Agnostic Hymn

I’ve never felt that I belong
To one religious faith. I flout
Too many rules; they call me wrong.
Does heaven wait for those who doubt?

I also find it rather odd
That atheists must scream and shout
Their certainty that there’s no god.
Does heaven wait for those who doubt?

I see no visions, hear no voice
And holy texts, for me, lack clout
Uncertainty is not my choice.
Does heaven wait for those who doubt?

And yet at times I hear the call
From deep within, my soul cries out.
But then it’s gone, and down I fall
Does heaven wait for those who doubt?

And when I die, if it’s all true
Outside the pearly gates I’ll pout.
Will open minds be valued too?
Or am I damned because I doubt?

A random tweet, taken totally out of context, inspired this poem, so thanks, Mr Fred, and apologies for completely misrepresenting where you were coming from!
This is a ballade. Not to be confused with a ballad.
They can both be set to music, but a ballade is more restrictive and French. Which, when it comes to poetry forms, is a redundant statement. Man those French troubadours loved their rigid structure!

Reawakening

He had strung me along and then broken my heart!
I was done with romance, I was finished with lies,
So I’d found the solution, I just wouldn’t start
In another relationship. No! I would rise
Above sex, love and dating, be lonely but wise:
Better that than go through all the heartache again.
Ah, but in the last week, to my shock and surprise,
For the first time in ages, I’m noticing men.

Oh to celibacy there’s a delicate art
But I find my resolve has become compromised.
It gets harder each day to dodge each cupid’s dart
As my long term addiction to solitude dies
How I miss those endearing, desire filled sighs!
How I’d love little love notes each morning to pen!
For it’s spring, and it’s time for the sap, now, to rise:
For the first time in ages I’m noticing men.

I won’t go back to him, for it’s best we’re apart
But I’m realizing now that there’s plenty more guys!
So I find my self marking them off on a chart
Grading aptitude, style: can they tie their own ties?
Just to try and eliminate them, but their eyes!
So sultry and sweet, so it’s ten out of ten!
And, oh merciful goodness! The sight of their thighs!
For the first time in ages I’m noticing men!

Discouraged by the cruelty and the lies

I retreat back from inside my eyes, withdraw.

I’ve sized the world up, weighed its flaws and found

My soul too raw to cope with sounds and stenches

It turns in-bound: it wrenches itself free

And ventures to the inner me to hide,

To flee deeper inside until this passes

The wide and wild masses of despair…

But soon, alas, I have to care again

And stare again at all the pain, the lies.

As promised, a poem for Helen’s other whippet, Charlie. Charlie is not really a whippet. He is one of those medieval hunting dogs you see on tapestries. I actually don’t think he is real at all.

So I decided to go for Gawayne and the Grene Knight style alliterative verse, as I thought that would make him feel at home.
Fun fact! Proper famous poet Simon Armitage – who has met Charlie – has translated Gawain and the Green Knight and Le Morte d’Arthur into modern alliterative verse – check it out!

Hound

An anomaly, not of the now, an anachronism,

He sits, stick-straight, at his mistress’ side

His sinuous shape silk stitching, a shining skein,

Bright eye a bead: black, brilliant, bold.

How is he here in this heaving house

Of ratarsed revelers, rowdy and rudely reeling?

Did he blithely bound from an embroidered bower,

Tear from his tapestry, trailing threads?

No modern mongrel, this medieval mutt,

But a handsome hound from a hearty hunt

Set free from centuries of stylised stillness

To proudly protect his poet patron.

But where is the wall hanging whence he wandered?

Who has his place in the howling hunt?

Perhaps a perturbed and petulant poodle

Who exchanged with Charlie, a charmed changeling.