NPM 2

As a fair-to-middlin' fan of Dylan Thomas, I could not help but be tremendously impressed by his Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, which - as it turns out - is an example (and a very good one) of a poetry form called a villanelle.

The villanelle, according to poets.org, "is a nineteen-line poem with two repeating rhymes and two refrains. The form is made up of five tercets followed by a quatrain. The first and third lines of the opening tercet are repeated alternately in the last lines of the succeeding stanzas; then in the final stanza, the refrain serves as the poem's two concluding lines."

I've tried the form several times and the result has always been muy goofy. The one below was something I had to get out of my system before settling down to work.

Are You Motivated?

Those of us who on an income depend
Typically cope with the bosses who will
Tell us to work things right through to the end.

Speaking of budget, there's nothing to spend;
They hope that the task will thrill and fulfill
Those of us who on an income depend.

And training, oh no! oh, heaven forfend!
As they, in playing the part of a shill,
Tell us to work things right through to the end.

And thus, we look past the lugubrious trend,
Mortgage the future, and pay the next bill,
Those of us who on an income depend.

The bigger they get, the more they offend,
As those who count beans and flog us uphill
Tell us to work things right through to the end.

A new set of laws may good things intend,
Yet they, too, who roam on Capitol Hill
Tell us to work things right through to the end,
Those of us who on an income depend.

Cheers...

P.S. While on the subject of NPM, which for me is a bagatelle, I found an interesting point of view over at the University of Chicago Press.