Still More Poetry

I never was a great fan of poetry, especially the kind that doesn't rhyme. I mean, if it's not going to rhyme, why not just make prose out of it? There are a few poems, however, that have caught my interest over the years, like "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" by Robert Service:
"Have you ever  been out in the Great Alone when the Moon is awful clear,
And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you could most hear,
With only the howl of a timber wolf as you camped out there in the cold,
A half dead thing in a stark dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold,
While high overhead, green, yellow, and red, the North Lights swept in bars?
Then you've a hunch what the music meant: hunger, and night, and stars."

It would be hard to make a song out of that one, but some of the best poems lend themselves to being put to music, like "The Road to Mandalay" by Rudyard Kipling:
"I have walked with fifty housemaids out of Chelsea to the strand,
And they talk a lot of lovin', but what do they understand?
Lord, what do they understand?
I've a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land
On the road to Mandalay, where the flying fishes play,
And the dawn comes up like thunder out of China 'cross the bay."

Whenever I had to write a poem in school, I would write the words to fit the tune of a song that I knew. That way I didn't have to worry about the meter, it just took care of itself. I tried writing some poetry when I was in the army, but I sucked at it. Years later I composed a few simple folk songs, and I was better at that. A song is just a poem set to music after all. One of my favorites, although it was not well received by some of my fans, was "Ode to a Dysfunctional Dog":
"Good dogs die young, you know that it's true.
The poor ones hang on for a decade or two.
I love to run rabbits, I thrill to the sound,
But there's nothing so worthless as a shit eatin' hound."

I wasn't trying to say that home schooling should replace the public schools. I just wish it had been an available option when I was a kid. I could have learned at my own pace and not have had to put up with all those goofy people. Well, I guess I could say the same thing about working for a living. Now that I no longer have to go to school or work for a living, I can learn and work whenever I want to, and I don't have to kiss anybody's ass to do it. Maybe my Uncle Eddie was right when he said they ought to let you retire when you're 18 and make you go to work when you're 65. Then again, if they did that, I would be working now, and all my good years would be behind me.