We’re locking up the poets

And throwing them in cells

They’re dissidents and show it

Via odes and villanelles

 

Collected incantations 

Against the status quo 

Acerbic observations 

Couplets in full flow

 

We’re exiling the muses 

To be banished somewhere grim

With Terza Rima that confuses

And volumes that are slim

 

Wokey right-on anarchists

Who kid no one with their balladry

Spending long nights getting pissed

And indulging in word saladry

 

Your rhapsodies are risible

We lambast your false bravura 

Clunky metaphors, made visible

Through enjambment and cesura

 

Your blank verse pentameters

Bring us out in hives

They define the parameters

Of your wasted little lives

 

You think you’re so superior

With your sestinas and your haiku

More verbal diarrhoea 

Than a symbol of your I.Q.

 

Each overwrought quatrain 

Or precocious piece of poesy

Is your custodial refrain

And the Gulag’s far from cosy

 

No alliterative insurrections

In language lyrical and louche

No introspective reflections

For poetic victims of a putsch

 

A Stanza Division storm

Will eliminate the bards

Crushing every sonnet form

Except on greetings cards

 

You put the verse into subversive

You put the rhyme in crime

You’re dangerous, discursive

So now you’re doing time