There Is A Scheme To This Rhyme
“Oh, Spring! Child of the aged Winter, up from the ice and cold with promises of dewy life and coursing warmth. You are most welcome.
“The empty nests in high branches above are homes again with small lives that will grow to sing with their joy of life.
“The icy winds, fleeing as the South moves with the sun and those holy words from men all in blue, ‘Play ball!’”
— Joey Bagadonuts
Walt Whitman never wrote about the start of Baseball Season, but he should have. It was a topic good enough for God when He wrote in Genesis, “In the Big Inning…”
I wish I knew some poets. All I’ve known are people who write dreck like the stuff at the top of the page. Being able to write poetry is a special gift that I certainly do not possess. Lord knows that I’ve had my opportunities. I took the Creative Writing classes in school, but when it came to the part when the teacher tried to have us write poetry – I watched and listened as the other students waxed poetic with variations on themes of plagiarism. I just couldn’t do it. Some 
copied Shakespeare, others mimicked Shelley or Dickinson. I somehow churned out pale imitations of Ernie Kovacs and Sid Caesar.
I think the closest I’ve ever gotten to great poetry was when we visited the gravesite of W.B. Yeats in Ireland last year. We had lunch there. They have a very nice gift shop.
I always got good grades in those classes, not because I wrote any good poems, but because I was able to impress the teacher with my parodies of what the other students were writing. A good grade, yes, but lots of animosity from the more serious students. I have actually been threatened in Iambic Pentameter. That is not easy for most 20th century clodhopper poets. It didn’t scare me so much as it impressed me.
It’s not that I don’t or can’t appreciate poetry – No, that’s not true. I just don’t get it. I’ve always felt that poets were just trying to be cute with the language. It seemed to me that if the poets weren’t lazy they would be doing Interpretive Dance or Synchronized Swimming.
Manhandling your idea into a preset rhyme scheme is more of a “square peg/ round hole” thing than an attempt to actually saying something. Free Verse is a loophole for those who tire of trying to jam that square peg into that uncooperative hole.
I guess that is the sum of all parts – I just don’t get it. It impresses me as such an artificial construct that I’m surprised that it has flourished and survived.
Brace yourself! The following is a poem that I actually wrote, by myself, with my own ink stained fingers. If you like it – tell your friends. If you don’t – Congratulations on your good taste.
A Poem
There was a young girl from Peru
Who said, “I’ll do it with you,
But not on the floor
‘Cause I’m kind of sore
Last night I was with Montezu…ma.”
Montezuma
Down the Hall on Your Left 