Poems That Rhyme

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.