THE THIEF OF RHYME


One morning in the summertime
I ran into the Thief of Rhyme.
I said “Good day” and “how’d’ye’do?
I’m Sandra Bond, and who are you?”

He grinned at me, and showed his teeth,
And said “Of rhyme I am the thief;
I steal from poets every day,
And then their rhymes all go to hell.”

I found, alas, that it was so;
My rhymes were gone, I had no more,
I couldn’t make them work a damn,
And was nonplussed what to do next.

I hoped good luck might come my way;
Instead I met the Scansion Thief,
Who took away my ability to make poems scan,
And now they’re as blank as a very blank thing indeed.
They don’t even all have the same number of lines per stanza any more.
Oh bloody hell.

Sandra Bond is a Staffordshire novelist, poet and tragedian who
considers it most unfair that writing one piece of verse every month
or so does not attract a living wage. Her first novel, THE PSYCHOPATH
CLUB, was published in 2021.
https://www.sandra-bond.com/