Roses are red, violets are blue, I'm way too cool to make my poem rhyme

Round two of the poem competition began yesterday. I was as eager as a kid at Christmas to pour over the next 12 poems I'd been sent to judge, convinced they would be an improvement on the last lot. Well, well, well. Waddayaknow? They were basically a load of stinking cat's piss as well.

To be fair, a lot of the death and misery along with the sappy romantic shite was gone but instead I got a bunch of the too cool for school 'I'm not going to rhyme because my words are so deep and random and clever that rhyming will only serve to dumb it down for the idiot masses' stuff.

Which is worse? I think I prefer the miserable cancer poems.

Forgive me but I like a good old fashioned rhyming poem. One that you can sort of sing along to. Imagine if dear Dorothea Mackellar had thought 'I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains, of rugged mountain ranges, of drought and floods and horses...' Doesn't quite have the same feel really.

So all the ones I selected as being in my top 4 rhyme. I make no apologies for that. Perhaps it's because I grew up with 'All right, Vegemite' and those sorts of books that I prefer the rhyming poem. Plus, let's get right down to it; it's harder to come up with something brilliant that rhymes. One of my all time favourites is Edgar Allan Poe's - The Raven - which is fantastically frightening AND it rhymes! How on earth did he do it? Who would know. And apparently many emerging poets aren't terribly concerned. (If you haven't read it check it out here: http://poestories.com/read/raven )

Sadly, the entrants are unaware whether their poem has proceeded to the next round so I have no details for you as to the success or otherwise of my own (rhyming) masterpiece. You will know as soon as I do.

Until tomorrow xx