Shall I Compare You to a Charging Rhino , Not a Valentines Day Poem
Shall I Compare Thee to a Charging Rhino
Romantic love, the most machiavellian of tricksters
Does not exist, persist, insist … to make you happy
It’s conception ... is for the proliferation
Of sappy rom-coms, agony aunts, and soiled nappies
I’m aware
This makes me sound like a spoilsport
a Nelly of the negative sort
Or in the the very least
A blabber-mouth of the kind most immensely huge
Outing Nature, her seductively cruel subterfuge
Truth-telling time
To romantic love …
I’m actually a soft touch
Once you get past my fifty armed ninjas
Designer hair-shirt and protruding rhinoceros tusk
But why the sadomasochistic-determination
The flea-bitten, dogged selective-continuation
When the ever-arising expectations elicited
Lead to growing disappointments
and satisfaction deficits
To exhume the nuggets of a long-since dead philosopher
Iconoclast, ne’er-do-well, and un-intended rabble-rouser
Socrates o’pined an unexamined life was not worth living
Now here’s a unemployed, dress-wearing, street-denizen
A girl wouldn’t have minded dating
Romantic love for all its rough-play and reneged promises
Whispered sweet-nothings and bellowed is that all there is
Romantic love
For those who put their tender Psyche under a sharp, penetrating microscope
And Cupid with his hemlock-drenched arrows
don’t leave them a cat-loving misanthrope
Well then …
Romantic love and its aforementioned, diapered and divinely fickle messenger
Become gurus-extraordinaire, the most spiritual, if promiscuous ...
"Sorry what’s your last name again"
Desire-inspiring tutors
Afterword
A note on stanza three
To a charging white rhino
And not a summer’s day
A lover once compared me
In my striving for good humour
And a nod to his much-needed defence
I stopped my stomping about
And took it as a compliment
And now for the spoken word ... have a listen
Needless to say ... I am still single.
Poem Copyright Pryde Foltz
You forgot Rhino in the title of the post I do believe...
Never the less, I remember this one when it was new.
Still a classic and think you are in a very select group of folks that have been compared to a rhino, a white rhino at that!!!
Cheers ... my editorial staff is well appreciated. Yes I feel pleased to have made white rhino totem status ... maybe I will start a track suit company and write rhino on the behind. Do you think I have winner? LOL:):):)
You better copyright that quick or Im stealing it :)
Get that sewing machine out. I I tell you what ... you do the work and I'll let you licence it for 10 percent of the gross.
Rhino written on butt ... copyright Pryde Foltz ... lol:)
@prydefoltz,
Pryde, that's a really good poem. I normally prefer very structured meter and rhyme scheme, but I have to say your poem flows very nicely.
You, on the other hand ... a rhino, huh? You really know how to get the guys. Give them a visual image they'll never forget. And putting Socrates in a dress ... no respect.
In any event, great job and have a Happy Valentines Day.
LOL ... I do have few poems that don't get so wild into meter ... somewhere ... I am pretty sure I counted syllables on this one and paid attention to stress but from the point of view of making it flow and not fit too neatly ... if that makes sense. I call this a stilted or syncopated rhyme. Sometimes I will use internal rhymes and full stops to stitch together mis-matched structure. Yeah ... its a quilted verse. This approach grants more creativity in word choice. But you have to sit with things, and it can take a long time to make it work. Did you have a chance to listen to the spoken word ... sometimes the reasoning in my madness is revealed there. And as a poet I always reserve the right to exhibit license:) As a poet, I have a license to make mistakes ... lol:)
On your other points ...:):):)
To be clear ... the bloke in question did not say I looked like a rhino. Just when I was mad, it was like being charged by a rhino ... fortunately this rhino always avoided impact:)
And socrates wore a toga or some kind of dress ... no doubt about that ... trousers were a long way off:):):) It might have been skirt:)
Cool 😎
Cheers, Moon:)
Pryde, I hope you’ll share this in the Black Valentine thread in WE PAW
Sure ... I'll post when I on FB again:)
Since this is not my native language, it´s hard to get every hidden sense, but I got the whole thing and I love how you´re playing with the words. The topic is onmipresent but I like hiding behind my rose-tinted glasses ;) Thanks for sharing!