Looking at blank white pages , he sat and thought
of all the varying ways of approach and style
that the study of others and experience past had taught
were lorelei , that might practitioners beguile.

God's curse on amateur poets of structured verse
and all the thoughts they ever try to tell you ,
with rhythms and rhymes that seem to get worse and worse
concomitantly with what they wish to sell you.

Let me consider now the free verse scribblers too,
refusing to fetter their sacrosanct lines with meter
and who end up with a sesquipedalian stew
of unpolished works that , tremble , totter and teeter.

Not only that ! I've also found there are those
who take up space and , worse still , valued time ,
purporting to inscribe all truth in deathless prose
but in fact committing the worst of literary crime !

And so he thought he'd try to turn his hand
to each and every differing form he could--
thus hoping to join that apparently literate band
whether or not he wrote just to be understood

Failing that , as a critic he sought recognition
Scribbling and scrabbling after some words of praise
Consigning with juvenile wit his betters to perdition
Hoping to bend them to his own incompetent ways.

Look here , look at me , renounce and forget those others
who will not accept my salutary admonitions
No poet myself , I am the only one who bothers
to enforce all the proper poetic traditions.

And so he foraged ideas from far and near
despite the fact he never found a new one
nor ever found a way that was simple , clear
by which to present the world with another true one.