A dog remarks the passage of some non-
existent thief or killer stalking through
the night. The neighbors throw a shoe or two
in vain attempt to knock the mongrel out.
Discordant melodies (the word itself
a stretch of meaning; likewise rhythm, rhyme)
are all this dog can sing; he has been taught
despite the fact that never comes a crook,
that never sneak around the slightest threats,
to yelp and yip at slightest hint of sound.
His own horrendous singing sounds to him
like voice of heroism, struggling 'gainst
some nonexistent thought or thing that lives
for but one thing: to make sure that said dog
is downtrod ev'ry passing chance, is crushed.
When humans say this same sort of thing, they
are called the lunatics, the paranoid.
Yet this dog, being only dog in town
mistakes the silence for the tacit nod
of ev'ryone and keeps on howling loud.
Time passes and he comes to think that he
can really sing, that others like his song.
What no one ever told him is that rhyme
does not a poem make, nor rhythm bars
a master scribe. The essence poems have
cannot be seen by those whose chief concern
is showing just how erudite they are
(despite vocabulary that consists
of ignorance and bisyllabic words)
yet on they write. By they I mean the ones
who make their poems long by virtue of
a strange device: a ten-line chorus in
between insipid verses of a chant,
propagandic sing-song chant that's fit
for singing by a little child. Don't
go flattering yourself by saying that
an agent of the church (myself) is out
to squelch your spark of creativity.
It died too long ago to say for sure.
Because I know you won't see through my all-
egory and my poem without rhyme,
I'll spell it out for you (outside of chor-
us form), the message that I want to give:
Shut up.

Penned by my hand on the 8th of Daedalan, in the year 273 AF.