Liberation: A Nursery Crime

[ForEverAfter]

There was a young man, who loved to rhyme,
He rhymed and he rhymed all of the time,
So much so, he had to go,
His poetry crossed over the line.

To Broadway we sent him, with a year-long pass,
Where they like to sing, as much as faggots like ass,
But adaptational turds were all that he heard,
And he heard every word, oh yes, he heard every word.

Nobody was stirring, not even a mouse; no sugar plum critics, nor even a louse,
The musical version of Remembrance by Proust, was destined to play to a big empty house,
On opening week, it drowned up shit creek: you might understate, that it was “badly received”,
For seventeen weeks - by God it was bleak - the audience consisted only of Steve.

The subtext de-shelved, the meaning restocked: like dismembered tails stuck back on a fox,
Alex DeLarge was better off, watching that film that cut off his cock,
Resemblance, letter for letter, was the length of the book,
All seven volumes, seasoned to rhyme; all seven, uncooked.

The repetitive crime of the nursery rhyme, imposed from too early an age,
Steve grew up enslaved, not even a cursory glance beyond the bars of his cage,
He couldn’t get loose from Doctor Seuss,
Or the assertion his words must behave.

So, we set him free: detox by exposure,
And he said to me, he said it over and over,
“There is nothing worse than forcing a rhyme, oh,
Including child porn and being fucked by a rhin-o.”

His jokes made people cry and his poems made them laugh,
Like, “Gay Clowns in a Hearse” and “How to Fist Giraffes”.
Somehow, his free-form was infinitely worse,
Without the rhyme, it became pretty clear: he was rather perverse.

His naked words were, at best, deformed,
More suited, was he, to uniform,
More a fishbowl type, than a fish in the sea,
Steve was a man never meant to be free.

He rhymed so much he had to go,
How were we supposed to know,
That, outside his cage, he’d be more depraved,
Than the kid in Deliverance with the strap-on banjo?

Steve vowed to remain quiet,
After the riots,
As long as nobody witnessed his art,
Few words, said he: for more popular, you see, where his post-taco farts.

I found him one day, holding a sign in the city,
I asked him to read, I asked out of pity,
Dead men’s eyes rolling back in his head,
His bloated face: blank, swollen and red.

What remained of his belongings, in an old army trunk,
The smell from his pants, like an army of skunks,
Crumbling teeth sticking out from his gums,
Like broken shells on the beach, left to rot in the sun.

He read in monotone, as flies danced on his face,
And, with each stanza he upped the disgrace,
His poem decomposing right there on the street,
Nobody threw roses, no coins, or buckwheat.

I couldn’t manage to speak, so I just nodded my head,
Like a trip to a freak show, or finding a stranger in a bed,
It was too much to bear, this solar eclipse,
Steve: already dead, still moving his lips.

The joyless junk in his track-marked arms,
Prolonged suicide as recreational self-harm,
I put him down,
Like a lame horse on a farm.

His sign read: “I have no audience: please lend me your ears.”
I tore it in half and searched his pockets for gear,
That was the last time I set him free,
A man who claimed to be a poet: when, neither poet nor man was he.

 

[New]

I enjoy this tragic story. Is this about anyone in particular, or pure imagination?

Whatever the inspiration, I can certainly relate to being fettered to failure due to invisible rules. Thank you for sharing this with us.

 

[ForEverAfter]

It's about a lot of people. I've tried, in the past, to encourage people, who write what I consider to be mediocre poetry, to stop rhyming. It's by far my biggest criticism. Especially when, as is most often the case, the rhymes are forced. It makes me cringe. If you're not going to take the time to read it to yourself, and get the rhythym right, don't make it rhyme! Rhyming properly requires time. I did a poetry class at uni last semester. In total I've done one and a half years of poetry. And every class is full of shitty poems that sacrifice meaning in the name of - what? - words that sound the same? Rhyme should add to the poem, not detract from it. I've encouraged people to let go of structure before though, and found that - without being able to distract via the illusory musicality of rhyme - their poems are vacant of any redeemable qualities. It frustrates me that poetry is perceived as the aesthetic arrangement of linguistic symbols and nothing else. The meaning comes first. Rhyme can be a useful tool, but if you look at it how it originated you'll realize that it's actually a latinate form of punctuation.

Before "modern" punctuation, texts were written in massive blocks, with only spaces between words to separate the letters. Before that, there were no spaces. Rhyme was used to indicate the end of a sentence, and a shift in rhyme to indicate the conclusion of what is now referred to as a paragraph. Sentences often had the same number of words, in order to further improve readability. Rhyme, then, had a practical purpose. In the majority of amateur poetry, it serves no purpose. It is a hindrance.

But you can't break down all the boundaries, like Steve. You can't go beyond what people are willing to be exposed to. I like to think that I can, but even I place limits on myself. A certain amount of structure, or adherence to the so-called "rules" might be neccessary. But, come on people. We're not in fucking Ancient Greece, any more. To consider rhyme a neccessity is thousands of years backwards. Forced rhyming, and meaningless rhmying, is the most rigid structural device in the history of linguistics. If you rhyme every time you write a poem, you're basically just applying ancient punctuation to modern text.

Don't do it!

Argh!

 

[New]

I see it now. You explanation makes the metaphor far more clear.

 

[maxalfie]

"How to fist giraffes", that made me laugh out loud when I read that part.

 

[Ashley]

You wrote a poem about me! I'm crying so hard I can't even see!

 

[ForEverAfter]

I come across like a bit of a dick, sometimes.

But, I mean well. I assure you.

 

[Ashley]

I know you do.