confessional verse

I really only have 
two gears for poems:
sing-song same-same 
meter trucking on down 
the stanzas, line breaks 
playing tricks to make 
the march seem free, 

and 

shuffle. Same as above, 
but put the rhymes on 
unexpected beats, just 
so they're all there. 

Oh, plus my standby:
conversational prose, 
pretty much how I speak 
- like this one. Same trick 
with the line breaks, 
but 

I don't really call that 
a "gear" - would you? 

More like coasting in 
neutral, down the slope, 
crash off or through any
available guardrail into 
handy ditch or over a cliff 
and back up again. Just 

so it's written down all 
even-uneven, funny-
looking - it counts. 

So, I have only two 
gears, really. Two gears 

and a mode.