Rhyming Simon

I am seriously out of kilter with the poetry glitterati,
my poems have lines that sometimes rhyme, so therefore are not arty
farty.
I discourse on experiences that have happened to me,
I know bugger all about Dionysus or Beerbohm Tree.
What the hell's 'metre' and 'scansion' and 'strength'?
Some of the lines that I write are not even the same length.
But I have a compunction to write it all down,
every adjective, verb, conjunction and noun
and hope in the end it makes sense to me,
an echo from my past, like climbing a tree,
or jumping a brook, or making a camp,
or some half remembered meeting with a scary old tramp.
It just pours out from my brain and onto the page,
nostalgia or jealousy, humour or rage.
I have no control but must bow to the lust
of my compulsive master before I am dust
and hope what is left makes sense of it all,
my reason for being, for answering the call
to forget my upbringing and working class rules
that taught me that poetry was for wastrels and fools.
So judge not my rude scrawling or lack of comprehension
or the fact that in my writings nowhere do I mention
Greek gods or Roman deities - or my lack of clever prose,
I've tried really hard to write like that, God in heaven knows
but it always ends up doggerel and I really haven't the time
to alter now the way I write, so I'll just have to let it -
rhyme.

?John Jones-April 2002