In which the narrator is very slow to get to the point.

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A plan discussed is often left to rot
Or simmer into scents that time forgot,
Before fruition fruits to –ition, yet,
Even when telling stories of regret
Where heroes falter ‘fore they hit the mark
Or even see the place the mark would park
When looking for a muse to feelings spark,
We must progress lest tired eyes despair
From couplet after couplet without care
For those that crave the structure of a plot
Or characters that reason with their lot,
Seeking improvement and to action take
In service of their misery to make
A better life, or world, or something grand
That poetry should grant me as my brand,
Being as I write like any minstrel, trite,
Tunic-ed in brocade and pant’loons tight,
Singing a sonnet when his feelings brim
Or when the whispers whisper whispers grim,
Cascading clauses he must bring to close
Lest halfway through this chapter I disclose
My lack of true direction for this piece
And far outstay my soonly ending lease –
Already March in Twenty-Twenty-Four
And Summer’s left with wafts of petrichor
And still our bitter pen must spin this yarn
(A meta-medieval bildungsroman)
Berating sorry ears with rhyming slurs
In bathos slips that all too oft occurs
Like: “when this bitter truth made know its woe
It struck him deep and beat his spirit low.”
Or, “write a book that none shall ever read?
To bear the dust as doth the tumbleweed?”
And not to mention, “Oh, you’d die! You’d die!”
When riffing on a boysenberry pie.
Yet still we do enjoy our metered craft
And think it time we spin the final draft.
The plan I long ago discussed (an hour
For me, yet you some twenty seconds prior)
Was but that half-baked scheme our hapless prince
Concocted to his lover’s conscience rinse
Before their sin caused prudish God to wince.
As I was going to say, our prince was not
A man of action, yet through magic plot
We solve all vast conundrums, such as how
A boy and girl of age unknown could vow
To source the funds to pay for clothes and jewels,
And quickly teach the necessary rules
Of etiquette a lady must imbibe
Without a Henry Higgins to describe
The methods of the upper upper crust,
And using lines familiar, I trust,
To smooth a steely voice from vowels of rust,
“The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain”,
Etcetera. These trifles I abstain
From plotting lest my temperament disdain
A job I leave to novelists to solve
Not lazy poets who themselves absolve
From realism’s strictures lest we paint
In journalistic tones what should be quaint
And vague in whimsied charm, although I know
That some exist who claim the flowered flow
Of pretty verse means nothing for not “true”
To grim reality, and take their cue
From St. Bukowski and St. Hemingway,
Each great but not the sole expressive way
For hearts to delve within then have their say
(*Ring-Ring* “Hello?” “It’s allegory calling”).
Alas, I seem to from my perch be falling
Before I’ve chirruped anything of weight,
But such is often meant to be my fate;
To ramble on like Byron in Don Juan
Until I have no audience but one
(Hi Mum!), so must move on to paint the trail
Or be at this until I’m old and frail.
Two weeks had passed since last we saw our maid
And prince, and, as I mentioned, gowns were made,
And jewellery found and crowned, and accents clipped
Into a noble shape; three wishes ripped
From Cinderella, this I will admit,
Although the details vary quite a bit.
A wimple crowned new golden curls, and face
Refined into expressions stained with grace
(I’d say with greater beauty yet our taste
Says, "there are times pure beauty is debased
By tools of trades unnatural to flowers
Whose freshness comes from unaffected bowers")
Her flowing peliçon of white displayed
The station of her conjured birth, conveyed
By steps too regal e’er to brook debate
And figure any court would infiltrate.
This vision ‘pon the arm of our young prince
Armed with a book of manneristic hints
Is she who walks with he into the court
Where many of fate’s lessons shall be taught.