A few nights ago, I was really drowsy for some reason. I texted Bo that I was snoozing on the sofa, remarking that the phrase sounded like a good title for a poem.

Immediately I received four one-line texts from him…

Snoozin' on the sofa.
Time to be a loaf-ah.
Stretched out and prone
in the sleepy zone.

Robert Frost, no.  But maybe Ogden Nash or Shel Silverstein!

I call these five-minute poems. A line, or phrase, comes to mind, and within five minutes you’ve developed a short poem from it. Sure some of them need a lot of polishing, and some are just silly, and some aren’t worth repeating, but there they are. Playing word games.

But they are fun. Often I go back over them and use them as a basis for stronger, more polished works. I’ve got several award-winners that started out this way.  Some start, as Bo’s, as a few couplets, but sometimes it’s a 4-liner with a-b-a-b rhyming. And mine always rhyme.

What’s important is that, no matter how silly or simple, there’s a place for a five minute poem. It can lead to bigger and better things. It gives you a foundation.

My quick poems are usually little four line ditties, much like the one Bo texted to me. But several of my friends are Haiku artists, and they can produce one at the drop of a hat, or a hint of a subject. I’m amazed at those short poems that contain such intensity with brevity. I labor for hours to produce things that slip easily off their tongues.

Once in a while there’s just a line that haunts me for a long time until I find a home for it. No five-minute poem there. That’s usually where my free-verse poetry originates, and I have to think and fit the thoughts together, like a puzzle, for them to develop. But that’s okay, too.

Then again, maybe it’s W.A.D.D. again.  Always churning my mind, quick bursts of words, not settling in on a longer thought.

Do you produce five-minute poems? I think if you’ve got a creative mind, this happens. It might not be a poem. It might be a short story, 100 words or less…

(mental note: sponsor a contest…)

Whatever works. It’s better than writers’ block, when NOTHING shows up!