Misc Notes on Rhyme

by Jeff Liebermann

Ver 1.0.0

Is it a crime,
that poems should rhyme?
Disjointed rows,
should be called prose.
The words are smart,
but is it art?



There once was a poet named Bart,
Who thought he was terribly smart.
He tried to define,
why poems shouldn't rhyme,
and decided what's left must be art.



Sorry that I offend thee,
I was hopeing that you'd see,
I am one that spends much time,
Writing words in verse and rhyme.

I am told that rhyme is dead,
So it's written, so it's said.
I don't think it's very smart,
To call rhyme a long lost art.

What I learned in class and school,
Taught me that there is a rule,
Beauty is for those that see,
far beyond reality.

Can't you read my words and signs?
Perhaps you read between my lines?
Can't you see I have a plan?
To improve the fate of man.

Art is something that is done,
by masochists who get their fun,
while others cash-in with my name,
I only get to keep the fame.

I read the writing on the wall,
recite verse down on the mall,
Scream the words into the crowd,
and all I get is "not so loud".

This perhaps my ending fate,
to those that don't appreciate.
My heart goes out to those in need,
That cannot write and only read.



Since you like a poem so much,
Lacking thus the poets touch,
Could you spend a little time,
Hacking words in verse and rhyme?



I see that you favour free verse,
For makeing a very strange purse,
But pigs do not sing,
and fly on a wing,
or can there be something much worse?



Nay say I, it must be said,
I like my rhyme, and it's not dead.
For without rhyme, it's so much worse,
that's really prose, and never verse.

Four hundred years, they can't decide,
a simple thing, it must be pride.
Rap songs chant, all in good rhyme,
with modern words, all about crime.

So read my lips, from one that knows,
If it don't rhyme, you call it prose.
I know it's true and know I'm right,
Rhyme won't quit, without a fight.



Poems will come in many ways,
Rhyme will be what I do praise.
Iambic pentametre or some such,
Meter matters, oh so much.

Free verse has no rhyme or meter,
temper, stanza or worth either,
Ask among the few that knows,
If it don't rhyme, then it is prose.

Maybe blank verse is the way,
that the world thinks today,
Maybe poets lack the time,
To write poems in verse and rhyme.

Art is what we make of it,
Rhyme and meter and some wit,
All I ask is that you curse,
The latest plague of free verse.