The Object of Poetry Betrayed
He starts off rhyming but he flops to slime
Of almost rhyming: “oily” rhymes with “me”
Supposedly. This failure comes from “crime”
Of laziness. He thinks that, shiftless, he
Can shift and chop and change. He can, but why?
The lurch from rhymes to near rhymes does not make
The poem better. It just flops. Why ply
The trade of poetry by using fake
Rhymes, near rhymes, slant rhyme, when you started off
With true rhyme? No improvement comes from this.
The “poem” starts to slide. It starts to cough.
The outhouse hole prepares itself for piss.
A wiser way would be to crumple words
And start again instead of using turds.
~ Phillip Whidden
by phillipw | Feb 18, 2025 | BA |