Have the poets become doctors.
Those Bards will know what to do
with a diaeresis or epanalepsis.
They’ll alliterate the appendix
with the rondelet, prescribe tropes
and tropes of chthonic for a nasty
limerick. They’ll scan meter
and brain matter, listening for
iambic pentameter through a
stethoscope. O apostrophe,
they’ll say, you’ve had your
odes, now is the time for surgery
on your sonnets. They’ll ban
the cruel practice of vivisecting
villanelles and no one will suffer
of enjambment
again!
They’re cheap – anapaests
can be removed for a couplet
of bucks. The vaccine for Haiku
flu has no side effects and save for
an epic case, a poem is much
less paperwork. Irony can
finally be eradicated, though lord
save us if there’s an outbreak
of anacrusis.
Call them quacks,
call them ryhmesters,
but the public loves the option
of a heart crushing ballad
or bone setting verse.