Poetitis – A Public Health Warning
There’s an epidemic sweeping the nation,
A disease that’s only going to get worse,
Cos of these poetry competitions and slams,
And those that have been exposed to… verse.
It’s a socially-transmitted disease,
And the oral tradition of which I write is
Derived from having unprotected sestets,
And it’s got the medical name of “poetitis”.
Once a rarefied condition suffered only by poets,
But now everyone has deciphered the code,
Through limericks, and haikus, and sonnets,
It’s now as prevalent as The Common Ode.
No longer the preserve of the Bards,
Its causes are certainly not vague,
Its symptoms are debilitating,
And couplets get spread like The Plague.
Public Health England has issued a warning,
That sticking to prose is no longer a barrier:
Once you start worrying about metre,
You’re probably a contagious carrier.
The best treatment is isolation,
But that’s easier done than said.
It only takes a careless quatrain,
For the virus to be much further spread.
For poets tend not to be continent,
With their infectious sense of bad timing -
Before you know it there’s iambic pentameter,
And a constant tendency to rhyming.
So take the right steps and be careful,
Behave, now you know what course the right is,
Avoid those mad, raving rhymesters,
And save yourself from “poetitis”.
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