"Pondering Poetic Form" (P.o.t.D. 2/26/15)

Yesterday...
I was stumped on how to proceed,
So I looked up poetic form,
In wikipedia -
A nice, little knowledge repository -
And learned about villanelles.

However, there's some lingering discussion,
Bouncing around my brain,
Trying to separate poetry from prose.

These days, poetry is often free form,
Without rhyme, or meter, or other structure;
But it still picks up a rule,
Here and there,
To focus on pieces,
Instead of an over-arching story.

There's no entry requirement,
Where the words form a haiku,
Or sonnet, or villanelle, or limerick -
No entry fee of just so much assonance or alliteration...

For all I know,
The next line in this poem could be:
asdl;fjaoijea;slkaj
- A cat or cockroach crawling across the keyboard.
Even that has structure, though,
For you can plot where the cat's feet,
My fingers, landed.

Also, a little can be said
Of breaking sentences up,
Before their punctuation marks -
Where I want the reader to linger
And digest some small truth,
That might well be missed,
Mulling over a novel.

Poems become all the more powerful,
Read aloud, by their authors,
Adding inflections and emphasis
To the parts, to the refrains,
To little bits of everything.