Marshall Macluan said the medium is the message, and although the message can also be short or long, however it is delivered it should have a meaning. And the meaning  should be clear.


People are too busy living to agonise over the meaning of poetry. If it has any meaning, it is to help them to live; it if can do that, then as far as I am concerned it has fulfilled its mission.
The poetry I write is just another way of saying the same thing, whether in prose, in a story, or in a cartoon. Different medium, same message. 

I like to make it rhyme - though not all the time - but it helps us to retain the poem in our brain; if we cannot lose it, it's there when we need to use it (and if you can, it helps to make it scan).
 

Poetry is an individual thing - probably because each individual is a poet; even though they may not know it. It is the child of the imagination and if we want to reach the heart as well as the head - sometimes through the sense of humour - there is nothing  better.​