Alas -- the signs are not auspicious.
Shallow, hackneyed, meretricious,
Butchered rhythms, forms and cases
Feeble hearts with ugly faces
Cheap affairs in tawdry places!
Made in couplets, rhymed for fashion,
Without hint of grace or passion.
Fitful notions, wizened shoots,
Tinny horns with brassy toots,
Heros, dressed in monkey suits.
Protests made by fools as I,
Under God's condemning sky,
Shame the heart left out to dry,
Without caring, without sigh.
I would you sang in poems delicious,
But the signs are not auspicious.

Llewellyn Murfree Gizmoid
Rhymes From the Bog In Back
Manchester, 1999