WHEN TO WRITE POETRY
I’ve been asked by your teacher to sum up all this hype
By encouraging you to write poetry, but, which type?
It depends on the mood you’re in more than anything.
If you’re really happy, perhaps you’d rather sing.
If you think that poetry’s on the nose
I advise you to stick to prose.
But if you think the person of opposite gender
Just over there has descended from heaven above
And your feelings are really soft and tender
Poetry is the best, to write of love.
A beautiful being in a bonnet
Is a perfect subject for a sonnet.
Writing for your sister or brother, you would need a gimmerick
And, therefore, you would have to write a limerick.
Now would you like to know when to write in free verse?
That’s when you throw the rules away or put them in reverse;
Like some people not at all like you riding on a bike:
You just ride the wrong way and do anything you like.
When you have a long story to tell it is imperative
That you sit down for a time and write a narrative.
However, if you should choose to write an epic,
By the time it’s finished you’ll be quite decrepic.
It’s true! And in the history books you’ll find
That after writing Paradise Lost John Milton went blind.
Writing children’s poems or poems for football teams,
You take your writing finger out and oil it
In a very special way, it seems,
By sticking it in the toilet.
If you are not feeling too hysterical
You might write calmly, something lyrical.
But in a really silly mood the French would say it’s bon sense
To write a poem like this one, that is, nonsense.