What do you think of THIS poem?

Thanks for the comments.

Mark: How about: "Breakfast on the patio"
for Line 1?

This would give elective stress to "on".

Line 2 is supposed to onomatopoectic, i.e., "was abuzz": the sound of the fly.

Here's another poem:

Solitaire

The one-eyed jack is leering as he spies
a darkling queen so weary of her lot
that (damn it all to Hell) she won't look back.
Her suit is an inverted heart turned black.

The suicide king, with woebegone eyes,
resigned, as if his fate were all but bought,
is wishing that he'd stayed inside the pack,
for now his queen is looking for a jack.

The king has oversailed his laddred train
enough to see his suit and rank betrayed.
And striking at his head to spite his crown,
as if the cares of state had brought him down,
he drives a little sword into his brain.
Atop the queen the jack of hearts is laid.

I

The indiscriminate sail
of a bus
past its dock
you
2 yards astray
the uncomfortable hum of sweat
pitching ‘long the road

the police,
sick on questions, at
the stop of the road
another bus
to its eyebrows
in water.

II

A lion with
an ice cream headache
from work
books boxes pick notes
and flood points
close the city

the smell of stood water
puddles with currents
rippled knees
macerating
worryingly.

III

A child subsides
a swallow of earth
in the cemetery
amid sodden poplars
‘still not found’
‘last sighted’
‘walking his dog’
-still-

Jennifer
I
The indiscriminate sail
		       of a bus
past its dock
	      you
 	            2 yards astray
	      the uncomfortable hum of sweat
	      pitching ‘long the road
the police,
	  sick on questions, at
			      the stop of the road
another bus
	     to its eyebrows
in water.
II
A lion with
	   an ice cream headache
from work
books	boxes	pick notes
and flood points
	            close the city
the smell of stood water
		         puddles with currents
rippled knees
		         macerating
		         worryingly.
III
A child subsides
		a swallow of earth
in the cemetery
	         amid sodden poplars
‘still not found’
‘last sighted’
‘walking his dog’
		-still-

Richard Wilbur

Playboy

High on his stockroom ladder like a dunce
the stockboy sits, and studies like a sage
the subject matter of one glossy page,
as lost in curves as Archimedes once.

Sometimes, without a glance, he feeds himself.
The left hand, like a mother-bird in flight,
brings him a sandwich for a sidelong bite,
and then returns it to a dusty shelf.

What so engrosses him? The wild decor
of this pink-papered alcove into which
a naked girl has stumbled, with its rich
welter of pelts and pillows on the floor,

Amidst which, kneeling in a supple pose,
she lifts a goblet in her farther hand,
as if about to toast a flower-stand
above which hovers an exploding rose

Fired from a long-necked crystal vase that rests
upon a tasseled and vermillion cloth
one taste of which would shrivel up a moth?
Or is he pondering her perfect breasts?

Nothing escapes him of her body's grace
or of her floodlit skin, so sleek and warm
and yet so strangely like a uniform,
but what now grips his fancy is her face,

And how the cunning picture holds her still
at just that smiling instant when her soul
grown sweetly faint, and swept beyond control,
consents to his inexorable will.

It's a nice miniature drama, very compactly and neatly drawn. I like it (which, of course, doesn't mean I can't pick at it - a critic's license, you know).

I agree that the cadence is a bit rough at the start. For me, it might be better to cheat on the 8-syllable line format, by eliding to 7 or expanding to 9, if it resulted in a slightly more readable cadence. Or, if you are the sort who calls his own foot faults in tennis, you might wish to recast the first couple of lines.

I like the use of some end-rhyming and some end-consonance. That mix often works well for me. A bow to the left and a curtsy to the right, so to speak.

For some reason I balk at the connotations of "swallowed" in describing her acceptance of his excuse. I allow you, it fits the breakfast theme and his "feeding her a line" like a peach in a glove, but it seems to denigrate her judgement and that seems harsh. If anyone deserves a harsh epithet in this little scene, it is him.

To continue on the level of nit-picking - you might like to use "she'd" in the same line to denote she had completed her swallowing action prior to his becoming fearful.