ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

The Bush Poet's Curse!

I heard somebody recently declare good poetry
Is more than rhyming couplets strung together endlessly;
Poetry that's really good should have a better shape.
Indeed, at times, from any rhymes great poems should escape.
I'm here to say I quite agree. I think it is a curse
To just write rhyming couplets. It is mindless, but what's worse
Is that it's really boring, for the reader falls asleep,
And yet it is insidious. I've found that it can creep
Upon all versifiers. They are writing with great care,
Then suddenly it's landed on the page, as from thin air...
A string of rhyming couplets, like a warm and steaming turd,
That can only be dismantled by removing every word.
By grace of God, I've never been affected in this way.
I seem to have the happy knack, when on the page I lay
A bunch of words that form in rhymes, straight couplets never form.
(Of course, I'm blessed by being far above the rhyming norm!)
I urge you, heed my warning, for complacency is such:
Before you even know it, you'll be writing with this crutch.
One moment you're convinced you're really clever, then the next,
You groan to see a line of rhyming couplets. You are vexed.
You thought you had invented a new form, you'd done so well.
Alas, you've simply filled a page or two with doggerel!
The only consolation I can find in all of this
Is the knowledge (I can tell you, it's the source of total bliss,
And somehow seems to place me past the ken of earthly cares)
That I will never simply write a string of rhyming pairs!

© Stephen Whiteside 29.07.2016

A couplet here, a couplet there,
that's surely not too much to bear...(flamin' 'eck, it's contagious!)

I'd like to be a versifier unconstrained by rhyme,
and contemplate my navel, writing free verse all the time
so readers of my poetry would ponder, much perplexed
the meaning of the words I'd penned ... and what was coming next!

But sadly, I can only manage rhyming couplet verse,
just doggerel with metred beat (sometimes it's even terse)!
The curse of this affliction is a heavy load to bear
when every time I write, I see a rhyming couplet there.

If I could find a poet/doctor, maybe he'd prescribe
a special efficacious mixture that I might imbibe
to scramble up my brain cells, so the words would tumble free
and liberate a torrent of "uncoupled" poetry.