The poem below is an example of a Particular Poetic Form, one in which someone somewhere will be all too pleased should its popularity be revived.
This form could be called ‘Verder en naar beneden, schreeuwde de werkloosheidsuitkeringsman met een glimlach’ but that is not its real name.
Its real and ancient name is “SE1 7NA” (from which it is but a two-minute walk to the Hole in the Wall, and a seventeen-minute walk back, or more if the Thames regains liquidity and rises). It is a Formal Particular Poetic Form, as are many of its ilk.
Every SE1 7NA consists of two and only two stanzas, each comprising ten lines in
the wrigid wrhyme pscheme a b c b c a d e d f
AND
where the ‘a’ lines (and only they) in each stanza rhyme with those in the other stanza.
I would say more about this form’s provenance but the modest example below give so many cues that saying more would be, if this word can be used here, prosaic.
How soon may we see an SE1 7NA from any of you, and where?
Pensive Pints in The Hole in The Wall
‘Onwards and downwards,’ cries the dole man with a smile.
We’re to the pub before he can evict us.
Now London spends more cooling down than heating
we recognize his smile: familiar rictus
that our mirrors show us moments we stop bleating.
The taxed smog blacks us as we stroll the mile
of solid waste that’s wafting pounds and scents
across what still was river in our youth
when smelling salts (old sailors?) and breath mints
sufficed to whet what we called appetites.
New billboards bellow slogans. Little guile
and lots of blatant lies. We feel at home.
Old oxymorons, some like ‘green’ and ‘peace’,
and newer ones, ‘invest’ and ‘catacomb’,
compete. We spend our money sent from Greece
as repayment for when we helped them out the while
they Trojan horsed us prophylactically.
In other words (a moment here of truth)
we’re as broke and busted as our Grecian ally.
We drink on tabs the way we do most nights.
Earth Tourist 