I scorn to write verse that’s elite and obscure.

I write verse quite plainly so it will ensure
The man in the street understands every word,

Even though the patricians pretend it’s absurd.

Their’s is the verse that’s absurd, I declare.

What is the point in writing to share
When half of the populace can’t comprehend
The words that one’s writing?   I don’t condescend,
But to write poems in riddles and then to pretend
It’s a brain exercise for the clever to play
Is not, I insist, the Shakespearean way.

Shakespeare wrote, tried, tempered and true
For the man in the street, for me and for you.

He feigned no guile, but in lines that were plain
Described all our joys, our pleasures and pain.

But perhaps the learned feel differently,
Don’t have the sorrows of you and of me,
Don’t feel our joys, our passion and pain.

The way that they think sure isn’t the same.

They do win much money and adulation
Circumventing the battlers who live in the nation.

I write for the battlers. I fight for your cause:
For the homeless and hopeless, the lowly with chores
Mundane and essential, and done without glory.

If ever I’m famous it will be through your story.
MacKellar and Lawson, and Patterson too,
Wrote for us all, for the learned folk too.

Academics today write just for themselves,
Pretending they live in their own private hells,
Pretending ennui while counting the cash,
Writing more and more of their eloquent trash,
Caring not for the real world, disdaining the masses
Who politely accept as brilliant, what trash is.

I’m smart and know that they think they deceive you,
But you never read them. That settles the issue.

Modern verse only sells to the deans and the scholars
Because it is riddled with straws and with hollows.