Modern poets of today
critique antiques and their old ways
of poetry through rhythm and rhyme
treating these like sin and crime
"Pathetic" they say are writers who
write pretty poems only to
squeeze metaphor in structured verse.
Constraint, they say, there's nothing worse.
And all these canny girls and men
with beatnik brain and pretentious pen
look gravely on my rustic work
and at its dated style they smirk.
But free verse, for me, does not suffice
and antiquity is not a vice
so I will do what makes me smile
even if it's out of style.
For I'll take Homer over Greene
and Jane Eyre over Everdeen
and I like old films well renowned
with gritty grain and muffled sound,
and I think you should wait til marriage-
a view the modernists disparage.
and I still take down notes by hand
and I think today's songs are bland.
And if that makes me trite,
then proudly trite I'll be
because I like poems that rhyme
and I'll rhyme them to a tee.
