Jay Squires’ Squeezed Out Syllables Poetry Challenge
Greed
In an etheree
Three great forces rule the world:
stupidity, fear and greed.
Albert Einstein
Greed
power
self-serving
lust for control
obsessed with success
But it comes at a cost
when one person’s selfishness
denies others their happiness,
limits their freedom to make choices
and the chance to reach their true potential
© Carolyn Hastings 2024
Jay Squires encouraged those of us with ‘extra syllables gurgling around’ to ‘squeeze out’ 55 of them, one at a time, and arrange them into ten lines of poetry.
His idea was to make what is essentially a shape poem starting with a one-syllable line and increasing one syllable per line to finish with a 10-syllable line. Some people refer to this type of free verse shape poem as an etheree.
Jay, in his inimitable style, likened the ‘squeezing’ process to doing number twos which, as coincidence would have it, is exactly what I wrote about in these etherees!
