Which is good enough.
When I was twelve, I read two books: one was Think like a Grandmaster (a chess book); the other was The Elements of Prosody (not a chess book).
The second was the most effective: I know what an iamb is, and how five of them make a pentameter, and I'm crap at chess.
I know scansion, and internal rhyme, where the tension is metered out in rhyme (see what I did there? Very clever, me).
Now I'll try a random string of words, and see if it's blank verse, or the reverse, a self-referential reflection (is there any other kind) of the thing I have in mind, I have started (and, to be honest, there's some tricks going on, right there) and I'll continue, new, without the fix, with a word that has to be there.
Stopped short, where I lost the rhythm, broke on that full stop. Because, I've just realised, I'm a bit crap at this.
According to Poetry Mechanics Weekly, I should end on something obscure, but apparently meaningful. Whether it is meaningful or not isn't important, it's just got to look clever.
Don't mind me, my mind is me.
When I was twelve, I read 'Tom Sawyer'. It caused me to talk funny for most of the summer.
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