Simple Rhymes

To be honest, I haven't spent a great deal of my life thinking about poetry. When I think about writing, my passions run like the following:

1. Novels
2. Rants (essays)
3. Poetry
4. Novellas
5. Short Stories

My favourite poet is William Blake and that's mostly because I love it when people get angsty about politics. Don't you just get shivers when you read London? "Runs in blood down palace walls" It makes me excited and grouchy as &*T*&^.

Anyway, lately I've been forcing myself to read a little on fanstory. Mostly I read poetry, because it's a shorter time commitment, and I don't have too much time to screw around with that sort of thing. Whenever I go there I get more and more convinced that it's a place for people over the age of 35 to experiment in a sort of group therapy. Seriously, I think I've only read one thing there that didn't make me want to start chewing off my own tongue. It was a poem about Nascar racing and actually it was pretty good. But otherwise, it seems like the sort of place where people write lame 'who done it's and record their role playing escapades. I have a lot more respect for that sort of thing than I'm showing here. I just don't normally read either of those and so it's hard to get excited about genres I can't sink my teeth into. But the point is that I've mostly been reading poetry.

When I write poetry, I try to tell a story. Usually it's a story that would probably be more effectively told if I was willing to write a short story about it, but most of the time I'm not interested in taking that much of a detour from my regular writing menu to write something that's just a bug in my brain. So, I write a poem to remove the bug and give me some more brain room.

I usually write freeverse, but no matter what I write I keep score of the number of syllabels I use in order to make sure it ticks like a clock if it doesn't rhyme. That's because I don't really have a skill for coming up with unique rhymes and I can't stand writing something that's too simplistic. It makes me want to gag and die if I write something that's too common. Not that my poetry is really amazing, but it can't be run of the mill or I see no purpose in writing.

Last time I was on fanstory, I was reading this poem and I couldn't believe it, but this guy really rhymed 'park' with 'dark'. I couldn't friggin' believe it. His poem was not intended for children - it was intended for adults and I was endlessly confused at his style. I wrote him back and said something like: "I'm really sorry, but the meaning of your poem was completely clouded out by the fact that you rhymed 'park' with 'dark'. The only thing I could think of was; "Look what we found in the park in the dark. We will take him home. Will will call him Clark. He will live at our house. He will grow and grow. Will our mother like this? We don't know." I seriously haven't read Dr. Seuss in ages, but holy shimoly! Are we writing for adults or preschoolers here?

I'm probably too grouchy, but I can't understand the satisfaction of writing cute sing-songy rhymes for something that doesn't involve singing to my daughter. Sharing something on fanstory means that your audience is adults (mostly aged 35 to dead) so why would they be interested in reading something like that unless they were planning to rip off your idea so they could cross-stitch it on a pillow? But would an adult expression poorly written really classify as cute then?

Weirdos.