Looking  For Romance

(A Poem)

You’ll find no poetic cliché here

except, perhaps, for drugs sex and beer.

A verse composition in the English tradition

a conservative view, which forces me

to adopt a more prose position.

The vulgar is for me, vernacular verbiage

renounced as garbage, you see…colloquial

language helps to develop a trope

and given enough rope,

I may commit treason and go beyond reason.

This metaphorical truth ought to raise the roof

we plagiarise the past for new poetic excellence
which doesn’t really rhyme but it ought to get a laugh.

‘Oh the brevity of it all I’m having such a ball’

is an oxymoron a rather stupid cow?

or something of a paradox?

perhaps it’s an absurd truth

or a moribund metaphor tied up with string.

Come to think of it? It could even be a synonym

‘these are a few of my favourite things’.

How’s my metre? Is it something of a repeater?

Stylistically, how does it fare?
Does it want to make you slap your forehead
and pull out your hair?

You see...alliterative linguists languish in language,
while most academics just have a sandwich.

My rigid instability is not a reflection of my ability,
although this contradiction in terms
could open a whole new can of worms.
It may at least, afford me some credibility.

So! this mercantile musicianship of mine?
Is it the correct way to compose a poem?
Commit a crime and make it rhyme
to find romance?
become the new Lord Byron
and lead everyone a merry dance.
Because if it is? I at least have a chance. 

P. Williams ©2000&06