Silly Poem

[Babar]

I did this just for fun, I little friendly competition between friends, and I realise it's more rhyme than reason, but I needed some help. I'd like some assistance with the weak rhymes, and whether the AAAA BBBB CCCC thing works, but if you can help me otherwise, I'd be extra happy too:

(BTW, if you haven't seen the original Star Wars trilogy, you might not want to read this)

One day, on the ol' Deathstar Darth saw:
OB1 Kenobi, then his lightsaber did he draw,
Swish, Bzzt, Whoosh, and Kenobi was no more,
And Luke in the background was screaming: "Naaaaw!"

Next time Darth met Luke he set a trap
Darth thought it would all be a snap
But after beating Luke till he was soft as sap,
Luke got away, but now he couldn't clap.

Last time they met in space near a rock,
Luke knew he was a chip of the old block,
And while he gave Darth quite a knock,
Darth still saved him from the Emps' electric shock.

Before his death one thing did Darth ask,
He said: "Could I see you without my mask?"
When he died Luke had to do one more task,
And burn up his dad, so in fire he would bask.

[ManicMatt]

*Nasty mode activated*

Hmm it's the sort of thing I'd write when I was 12 years old...

Weak rhymes indeed! Especially "clap". It's obvious you used that merely because it rhymes.

Have this link, it's very useful. You type in a word and it will tell you what it rhymes with:

http://www.rhymezone.com/

[auriond]

I thought it was quite clever, in the way that rhymes are clever. But yes, the rhyme scheme does make it primary-school-ish

[Andail]

The thing is, that when you write a poem like this, with a very defined rhyme-scheme, and also with a pop-cultural theme, you need to do it flawlessly.

Any normal poetry can never be labelled "amateurish" or bad, since poetry is often about inner feelings and subjectivity etc, but this one isn't, so you need to do it really really well.

Start by checking your rythm. In order to sound nice, it should be consistent. Check up how to use beats and adopt a nice verse-meter. Iambic pentameter is the most common English meter, and would work well with this poem.
ta-TA ta-TA ta-TA ta-TA ta-TA

right now, you first line goes:
ta-TA ta-ta-TA TA-TA TA-ta.....or something....very hard to read aloud.

[Unknown_Terror]

Well all i'm gonna say is poems don't actually always need to rhyme, so trying to rhyme words when you've ran out of ideas is probably the worst thing to do. I don't like the poem plain and simple. I'm not saying other people don't, But i don't ... Thats all.

[ThreeOhFour]

Heh - the line about not being able to clap anymore made me laugh. I don't like the last verse bit - especially the last line... just seems like you put it there for the sake of having another verse.

[Babar]

But Matt, I was particularly happy about the not clapping line! I mean... he got his hand chopped off! You wouldn't be too far off with the 12 year old comment, though. I wrote it a long time ago, but I tried sprucing it up recently. Turns out anything remotely poem-like I write nowadays ends up sounding snooty and pretentious. I was unhappy with the last line as well, but even rhymezone couldn't help me there.

Andail, I get what you are saying, but how should the meter be changed? I'd have to switch around syllables and re-write the whole poem (not complaining, just wondering)? I was actually going for how you end the current line with a word in the second line (something I've seen work successfully sometimes), but I didn't exactly follow it through, and it ended up sounding strained there.

[ManicMatt]

Ooh yeah, I forgot he had his hand chopped off, sorry..   

But the rest of what I said stands!

[Wellington]

For some reason, the meter of your lines reminded me a little of the William Tell Overture. So, one trick to make the meter consistent would be to try setting it to that tune. You know, ta ta TUM, ta ta TUM, ta ta TUM TUM TUM.

Also, it's good to have a point, or at least some idea linking the verse together. I know it's supposed to be silly, but there's a difference between "Just silly" and "Cleverly silly." Sometimes sticking to an absurd rhyme scheme can earn you a little grudging admiration, even if the product is obviously forced. Internal rhymes are good for this.

So, let's try to do this.

In a place deep in space (long ago and far),
In a core corridor of the First Death Star,
Obi-Wan, dead and gone, shouted "Run, by gar!"
And "Noooooo!" shouted Master Luke.

On a slow lava flow down on Mustafar,
There's a schmoe, fallen low (looks like one big scar),
Now he'll dwell in a shell, due to organ-char -
And "Noooooo!" shouted Anakin.

Lucas said, "Camp is dead! From now on, I feel
Ev'ry part of my art should be Grim and Real!
Make it dark! Make it stark! Make it an ordeal!"
And "Noooooo!" shouted everyone.

(This was quick and dirty; "looks like one big scar" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. But if this seems like an improvement, all I did was:

1) Choose a point to parody. In this case, it was the movies' melodrama.
2) Add lots of tetchy internal rhymes that probably weren't worth the effort.
3) Set it to a demanding piece of music to keep myself honest.

If you don't use the internal rhymes, I think you can pull off the William Tell Overture trick if you try singing aloud every line as you write it. In your case, the first verse would become (with the fewest changes possible made to fit the meter):

In a hall of the old Death Star, Darth saw,
OB1, then his saber did he draw.
Swish, bzzzt, and whoosh, and Kenobi fell,
And Luke screamed (in the background) "Naaaw!"

[EagerMind]

Nice re-write, Wellington! This seemed like a fun exercise, so I decided to try my own attempt (hope no one minds!):

Through the Death Star
     Obi-Wan tried to sneak,
But evil Darth Vader
     met him in a corridor.
"I am now the master,"
     did the old apprentice speak.
A blazing twirl of sabers!
     Obi-Wan was no more.

Not quite sure what I did here structurally. Doesn't seem to hold to a strict meter, but it does seems to have a nice rhythm when you read it aloud (well, at least it does to me). Maybe someone less ignorant than me in the structure of poetry has an explanation (free verse maybe?)?

Anyway, just thought I'd throw this out there as one possible way you could take this, Babar.

[Andail]

Wellington, that was quite an accomplishment. A brilliant example of how a good verse meter can improve the quality of something otherwise quite corny. Of course, it took me two tries to read out the rather unusual (but nonetheless effective) rythm properly.

Then again, the whole practice of writing comical "poetry" about pop-cultural stuff like Starwars or LOTR etc strikes me as rather geeky, truthfully...