formalism

iambic verse must gallop like a horse
pentameter needs ten beats to the row
vocabulary's picked from any source
that fits your mood, however high or low
the even-numbered syllables punched more
but troches can be smuggled in by craft
an extra syllable appended fore
can make the meter work okay abaft
each age the Muse has settled on a form
to grace the message of what's getting said
Elizabethans made this one the norm
without which your best poems won't get read
beyond the craft, what's left is making Art
or else, like me, you've gilded a brain-fart