Activities Blog

Something Borrowed

Prompt ▼

Word Cards: Collapse / Smudge. You only need to choose one word card.

Wild Card: Mood: Uncertainty.

T'was brillig, and the slithy toves
did gyre and gimble in the wabe.
All mimsy...were the...wait...uh-oh
I think I read this long ago.

I thought it came too easily,
poured on the page just too damn quick,
just came to me too breezily...
OK, let's take it nice and slow...

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
a stately pleasure dome decree,
where Alph the sacred...river...damn...
It's Coleridge now! (But very nice, though...)

It's surely not expecting much
to scribble something fresh and new—
a this-and-that, a such-and-such
and kept within iambic flow.

God knows it's not a tricky task,
ti-tum, ti-tum...it can't be hard,
it really isn't much to ask,
so why be such a goddamn schmoe?

Tyger, tyger, burning bright
Oh f...f...flip, and Jesus H!
At this rate we'll be here all night...
There's something else wrong...just a mo'...

Balls, that last one's catalectic!
Isn't that just bloody super?
And it's sent me all trochaic!
Tum-ti, tum-ti...what a shit-show!

It's bad enough to plagiarise,
But surely I can count to eight?
Know my ti-tums from my tum-tis
and not talk crap through my chapeau?

So there's just room for one last try,
or see it all collapse in farce.
(Dear God, don't let it go awry,
I need to make this count, you know.)

---

She walks in beauty like the night
and wanders lonely like a cloud...
Hey now! I think I've got it right!
The line count limit's forty? D'oh!


Form: ad-hoc in (mostly) iambic tetrameter quatrains, with a brief trochaic interlude thrown in for lolz. Rhyme: abaz, cdcz and so on.
Lines: 40