Your Perfect Rhyme
I do not like your perfect rhyme,
I find it boring all the time.
It wasn't good in Shakespeare's hands,
No rhyming poet understands,
No Keats or Shelly, Byron, Pope,
Could find the poetry to cope
With wonders of the universe,
For that they should have tried Free Verse!
I do not like your perfect rhyme,
It seems so foolish all the time.
From Petrach through to here and now,
All rhyming works I'll disavow.
I want to drown inside the sound
of ee cummings, Ezra Pound,
Please keep me from those dreadful swines
Who choose to worship Gilbert's lines.
I do not like your perfect rhyme,
It's bell like ring should be a crime.
It's bad in English, German, French,
It leaves a horrid musty stench
And as for meter I'll just say,
That all blank verse is SO passé.
Unless your work's unrhymed and free
Your soul contains no poetry.
I do not like your perfect rhyme,
I will not hear it any time.
No Limericks shall pass my ears,
I've kept them out for years and years.
I've never heard a single word
Of Mother Goose, it's all absurd.
I only read free verse and prose
For all the rest, I hold my nose.
I do not like your perfect rhyme,
A sort of ancient worthless slime.
You cannot write constrained by rules,
The last resort of worthless fools.
Please stand by me on hallowed soil,
Where all the greatest writers toil --
Freeversing poets to a man,
Let's issue form a formal ban!
I do not like your perfect rhyme,
I can't believe it is sublime.
Now damnit! What is that you say?
Your words and meanings start to play -
I feel the meter in my bones,
Like music by the Rolling Stones!
It's not free verse it's so much more,
Your verse is like a Mozart score!
Ah YES, I LOVE your perfect rhyme!
I want to hear it all the time,
Bring Shakespeare, Shelley, Byron, Keats
With all their forms and special treats;
And after them I think I'll cope,
With Hilaire Belloc, Nash and Pope.
I've been so blind I did not see
That rhyme and flow are poetry!
Copyright © Jeff Green | Year Posted 2010
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