My Canterbury Tale

Mood: amused  Music: Futurama  Reading: Stuff for school

For my World Lit I class this semester, we had the option to “parody” the Canterbury Tales by Chaucer. I decided that this would be a fun challenge. And if I didn’t have to write another essay, hell yeah, sign me up!

So here it is. It’s pretty good if I do say so myself. The only thing we had to do was make the general prologue and prologue to the tale match his rhyme scheme: rhyming couplets with 10 beats per line. I realize some of the couplets don’t match the fluidity of stanzas before it, but hey, gimme a break. Usually when I wrote poetry I don’t rhyme on purpose. It makes the poem too “by the book” for me.

General Prologue

Today is a year off in the future,
There plays a melody of metal adventure.
People come and go, nothing ever changes,
Beneath the gilded lily, not so strange.
Much like the admired author before,
These folks are those who force us to explore.
The short conductor skulks from car to car,
Plastered smile, he fancies himself a Czar.
His story goes back to the days of terror,
He lost his lover to the heart wearer.
The headmaster and his pupil are hush,
Confirming here, the pupil has a crush.
Headmaster Flowers has family there,
Squire pupil stews, unspoken love ensnared.
The bashful bride is heaving with a child,
Farewell to the days when she could be wild.
Taken by the love that is overstood,
Would not walk away if only she could.
The smart dressed lady buries her nose deep,
Her unladylike skills lie masked, asleep.
The English actor with a wife, children,
Rides in character like M. McLaren.
One trick pony, his famous role what for,
Never alone on that one-hit dance floor.
There is one scientist with suspicion,
Stereotyped, glasses, hair like titian.
The pimp and his trick, no satisfaction,
Her story croons the law of attraction.
His story is like a war game, a test,
Outrunning the cops, a bulletproof vest.
Running along with wind from the Meadows,
Living their humdrum lives like a sideshow.

Prologue to the Assassin’s Tale

So it begins, in this city of sin,
The trials and travaille of one assassin.
Pondering her future, she gambles with life.
Laying waste to men, she was also a wife.
Step ahead of the law keeps her shadows near,
Yet nothing in her let her feel the Fear.
Her cathartic undoing – not yet Free –
The lady alight the train to Canterbury.

?: “Have you ever written anything in rhyming couplets with 10 beats per line?“