The Good the Bad and the Ugly…

Not a big fan of rhymed poetry—mostly it’s too contrived sounding, and the authors usually have no concept of where to apply the rhyme. Just what everyone wants to hear, Aunt Matilda’s eulogy finished off in 6/8 rhyme sounding like the Walrus and the Carpenter. And we wonder why the general public gags at “poetry.”

   Although, written in another era in a galaxy far far away on the planet, Rhyme to Connect with the Masses, the Walrus and the Carpenter is one of the finest examples of rigid 14 count rhyme broken into sixes and eights. Lewis is superb at meter. We should take lessons…

Ig Herriman sent this through to the Cheap Seats van in the meadow—beginning to flower (no. Not the van!) Unfortunately, the piece is too wide for our narrow format. We’ve asked ol’ Ig to reformat if he thinks it will work. Bad… was written for an eleven count line, so, don’t know if it will lose something in translation…? Broken into shorter lines may break-down into that sing-song twerpish sound we all despise.(?) It’s a poem with good strong meter, written matching the theme, multi-level rhyme schemes and even—a lesson.

A Bad—Really Bad Poem of

Duct Tape Consternation

In school we learned, nothing, of classical verse,

Instead—contrived Sneetichish, Seussian snerse,

Endless, yamm’ring of Whos and Cats in the Hat,

A Lorax wearin’ tennies, one purple spat.

Socialist puppets braying-out Ginsberg’s Howl.

Acrostic sonnets, let’s all knee-jerk and yowl.

Forget not—

Draconian haiku, the dillweeds’ sad curse.

In lieu of Service, Shakespeare, uncle Tu-Fu

we got wood shop, craft shop, pottery two.

For P.E. it’s clean socks, a comfy jock strap—

not one chance of learning whom, who, even what.

Neither metered nuances nor complex rhyme,

it’s i-pods tattooin’ in dogg’rel jive-time.

And—

What’s with this drum-thumpin’ gangsta type rap?!

Yo dawg—

In this post-literate so-ci-ety—

Even duct tape can’t fix bad po-et-ry…

Ig Herriman

Good or bad…put something on paper. Give it the ol’ look-see in a few weeks and discover what’s sprouted.

Max tdc