It started as a forum thread with no supporting facts
Posted by the lofty type this type of site attracts
Proposing a proposal to the readership at large
For this one association to take ultimate charge
And develop a new tool for the members to inherit
For the sake of pure consistency, if not creative merit
The tool would be a crafty one designed to put an end
To the vagaries of metred verse (that few could comprehend)
It would merge rhyming problems and problematic rythyms
With accepted rules embedded in its many algorithms
And it must be made responsive to a simple swipe or tap
On an iPhone or an Android – a real BUSH POET APP
The app would be developed with the broadest consultation
Over what comprises ‘poetry’ for this association
the forum thread spanned pages where poetic ideas
were referenced against jokes, and a smattering of fears
As enthusiastic members of the presupposing sort
Added animate emoticons to articulate each thought
With the consultation over the development began
And the programmers worked overtime to realise the plan
The icon was a gum leaf – the colour green and gold
And a simple interface would let the real magic unfold
With a minimum of fields ergonomically separated
An idea could be entered and a bush verse generated
One must merely enter ‘topic’ (e.g ‘toilet’, ‘old age’, ‘rain’)
And of course a category such as ‘humerous’ or ‘plain’
Then a field to enter 'gender', and a field to enter 'length'
And the app would churn a poem out of great vision and strength
And while everybody ‘poeted’ and had a lot of fun
The developers were working on version one point one
With the upgrade one could nominate preferred metric feet
And could call a punchline down to land on any given beat
A mere mention of a ‘heart string’ and the app would tug emphatically
tales of drunken escapades embedded automatically
landscapes were made meaningful a hundred different ways
and each and every poem reminisced the good old days
the worried judges worried over equal compositions
right across the board and entered into all the competitions
(automatically of course – for the app did everything
And the winners were rewarded with a notifying ‘ping’)
Until finally the idea struck one member over dinner
‘Build the judge into the app and then everyone’s a winner’
But what nobody expected and none could have foretold
Was that with this new refinement, we had sifted out the gold
And this horrible consistency was so blatantly bare
That we didn’t use the app at all – we actually didn’t care
If the formula was easy, the process was uninviting
We lost the sight that all the light was captured in ‘the writing’
The developers moved on to work on ‘painting’ apps - and worse
The sculpture app they made was regarded as a curse
And while ‘Art’ devolved to ‘art’ the true creative souls
Looked to find a way to fill all the newly forming holes
And when they shared their stuff over coming days and weeks
They just said ‘take it or leave it – I made it – no critiques’
h
