No Restrictions

And so the poetry fails,
A sullen reminder that whatever the hope,
Whatever the unspoken longing,
No words can ever do it justice.

The all-confining rhymes are long gone,
Seen for what once they may have been -
A prop, an occasional aide to those who wished
To commit these to memory.

After the rhymes, the structure soon followed,
Its wasteful restrictions flying through the glass
In a vain attempt to clarify the true spirit
Of everything everyone ever accomplished.

Yet still the words remained, a final barricade,
An iron-clad door mocking those who sought to
Break it down, to reveal what truly lay beyond.
For the door held above it the weight of the world.

Remove me, it so challenged, and you are left with nothing.
You can take my rhymes, and the world shall stand.
Take my structure, cause me to be amorphous.
Strip me of what you used to call art.

Pull from me the last vestiges of imagery,
Lift my last alliteration,
Slowly steal my sibilance,
Awkwardly annihilate my assonance,

Snap my onomatopoeia,
Burn me like a simile,
Murder my metaphors,
H-bomb my hyperbole,

Fix my antithesis,
Scrag my slang,
Tore my tense,
Love not my litote.

Do all this and I shall but laugh,
For while the world may withstand
The destruction of all my rhetoric,
Rhyme, reason, and even structure,

Though it may withstand a lack of all
That I once gave, it cannot bear
To see me gone, for I am the be all,
And end all of your poetry world!

And they stared at the door as it mocked them,
And saw that it was right.
So, with all the best will in the world, nothing
Can do my subject greater justice than this:

...