Not for me, the free-verse verses,
curses. worse! those terse reverses.
I prefer my diction airy,
love should be joyful; terror, scary.
How, without rhyme, can the ear be undone?
What good is a poem not meant for the tongue?
“Nay!” to the nihilist nabobs of knowledge,
you godless creations of mandated college.
Art’s not for asking, “now, what might this mean?”
It’s for wooing and warring, and all things between.
So give me some Shel, in the attic I’ll read,
or slip me a Byron to make my heart bleed.
Send me with Shakespeare or Marlowe to bed
(I know yeah, I know- white men who are dead).
Bring Old Uncle Walt, either Whitman or other,
(The first one for me, and the last for my brother)
Bring all the old leather-bound volumes of yore
let unrhymed, unfeeling verse fall to the floor.
Bring Geisel, bring David, bring Edgar A. Poe
(you wouldn’t believe the strange places they go).
Fiddle my heart-strings, tam-tam on my ears
with words that have bested the test of the years.
For it’s truth, and not freedom, that sets the heart free.
So your so called “free” verse- it just isn’t for me.
