Emergency Poet
It’s not easy being a poet you know
Sometimes your powers can wane
You start feeling the strain, as you bang out another refrain
I know it’s difficult to believe
As you see me here reciting my verse
But sometimes it feels like a curse
It’s easy to become rather terse
And when things start going really badly
It’s time for medical help, to call in the nurse
It started quite gradually for me, I noticed my verse was
turning quite free
But the problem wasn’t obvious to see, I wondered what the
hell it could be
My limericks were….lacking, my sonnets were….sickly
My ballads were… just bollocks, my couplets just wouldn’t
couple
My quatrains came out queasy, and it was no longer so
easy
Lyrics and haikus became mangled, my epics and epitaphs
all entangled
My rhythms all rambling and strangled
It was then that I fell, into a villanelle from hell
I forgot all the parameters, for iambic pentameters
You should have seen, the state of my Alexandrine
Each sestina could have been keener, and my cadences
cleaner
My metre was a mess, and soon I confess
That my long lyrical canto sounded like something from
panto
I couldn’t carry on at that time, I’d lost my powers of
rhyme
I’d finally arrived at the point to know it, I felt that
I must owe it to myself
To call on the Emergency Poet….
So I called one night after nine…the number was… Line,
Line, Line
After waiting with some frustration
I got through and had my consultation
She seemed to know the problem at once
Made me feel like a poetic dunce
She said I was over-tired and run down
No wonder I was rhyming like a clown!
To keep me from depression and wallowing
She prescribed treatments as following…
Starting with an exercise of blank verse, but nothing too
taxing at first
My diet consisted of a little thin doggerel, to be written twice in each day
Then to try a quick clerihew, don’t mind if I do, just one or two
She said in this gentle mode, I could work up to an ode
Until some new verses flowed
Then she’d be willing to bet, I could manage a sestet
So the moral of this saga is clear:
If your stanzas turn queer, get treatment, don’t fear
Drink plenty of beer
And if you liked this saga – then give us cheer!
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