Turn off the laptop! Don’t go on-line!

Pick up a pencil and pound out a rhyme!

Mix those metaphors. Count out the beat.

Pile up similes. Enjamb your feet!

Hurl forth words like stones from a sling.

Demand importance from a trivial thing!

Harvest cliches that stick like burrs

And trust the dust inspiration stirs.

Now lift that veil, raise the shroud

Say on a page what you can’t say aloud

To your friends and co-workers who simply don’t get it.

You know when you’re famous one day they’ll regret it!

While you trust the dust inspiration stirs

And harvest cliches that stick like burrs.

Don’t give up! Break every rule!

Go cruisin’ for a bruisin’ on the ship of fools!

Cling to your hope. It won’t last long.

Later or sooner, you’ll hear a new song.

That sounds so much better than your loved labors lost

And sends you brooding about the awful cost

Of slicing, dicing and caking the icing

Half-baked food for the soul.

Oh come on, you say. It can’t be that bad.

A rhyme in the bush is still more than you had.

Writing is always worth doing

Even if there’s more cowing than mooing.

You never know where your words may lead

Or who listens as you read

Your rhymes to four walls, three or two.

It’s about pleasing one person, and that’s you.