That five-seven-five is a scam,
Just nature plus seasonal spam.
A frog in a bog—
Wow! A leaf! And some fog!
It’s a tweet with a syllable jam.
Now limericks think they’re so sly,
With their jigs and their wink of the eye.
But their punchlines grow stale,
Like a bar yuck from Yale—
It’s the dad joke of poetry. Why?
Oh Shakespeare, forgive what’s been done—
Fourteen lines on a love that won’t run.
With their iambic moans,
And romanticized groans—
They're just Tinder swipes dressed as the sun.
Repetition’s the name of its game,
But by stanza three, it’s all shame.
You repeat and repeat,
Till your brain hits delete—
Was it clever, or just all the same?
Acrostics spell TRY HARD down the side,
A format no critic can abide.
Each line bends and breaks,
Just for symmetry’s sake—
And the message gets lost in the ride.
Free verse gets a pass, but just barely—
Too often it screams “Look, I’m arty!”
With no rhythm or aim,
Just vibes and a name—
Like a drunk giving TED Talks at parties.
---
There once was a muse unconfined,
Who laughed at each rule tightly lined.
When pure thought took flight,
It outshone every rite—
For raw truth outclasses form every time.
