This sonnet neither of sound nor sense
has lines landing nine syllables each.
I beg your pardon this rank offense
but ten for me is an awkward reach.
The hopscotch of the iambic line
is a schoolyard game I never learned,
though I'm older now and have the time,
I'm much too lazy to feign concern.
Though some still count beats like Ye Olde School,
most poets today, for better or worse
(ruler'd rhythm sadistic and cruel),
puke on the page and call it 'Free Verse'.
It's those Beatniks fault we do what we want.
If I want the last line to be 46 syllables, it'll be 46 goddamn syllables. I'm an American, I couldn't tell you what a 'Trochee' is without Googling it. Who needs 'Trochees' anyway if they feel the line beating in their hearts and various other body parts? Bukowski and Ginsberg showed us how brilliant we are drugged on our own voice. To hell with metre'd confines. Rebel! Disrobe your sentences! (The beaker breaks. The concoction spills all over your mind, effectively BLOWING IT! It's now 'experimental'. No longer rhetorical. Not an emotional or psychological diorama. Not a poignant exhibit from the past, but the raw feed. A brush fire sweeps the rose patch.) Flaunt your undisciplined nudity, amateur genius’ everywhere! You've got to let things splurge if you want them to have that romantic force. It wouldn't be right to simply graft our hearts onto the schematics of long dead British guys. Trying to speak with the cadences of ghosts is treasonous to our own, much more discordant age. (this is where I demonstrate my vocabulary) Besides, God, they're Boooooo-ring! We've got to light the maps aflame and survey the trees and rivers ourselves, to verify we're going where we're going. HOWEVER (and this is a fine example), wandering can be arduous too. Sometimes you're just fleeing across the page, speaking to reaffirm to yourself your own genius. Convinced, it's time to wind this down. Trying desperately to find a rhyme to let me out. I can't.
