Chickens

Another one of the series where animals are not what you expect.

Chickens are tasty, chickens are cool,

I saw a chicken on the grassy knoll,

Chickens are fluffy, chickens are bored,

There was a chicken behind Lincoln at Ford,

My friend has a chicken, who would always tease her,

That chicken assassinated Julius Caesar,

Chickens think big, chickens think grand,

One chicken took out Archduke Ferdinand,

Some chickens hurry, some chickens run late,

A chicken gave wine to Alexander the Great,

One chicken, though, could have been the hero,

Sadly he failed to kill Emperor Nero.

Though chickens may squawk, they also know Latin,

And one was driving the car that hit General Patton.

Chickens are often eaten and slain,

They got their revenge with the destruction of the USS Maine.

Chickens may be awkward, and looked at as just another bird,

But chickens ended the reign of Peter the Third.

Even as a chicken is not a high flyer,

A chicken assassin is always for hire.

Reviews

[W.k.kortas]

Apparently the old song which states "A chicken ain't nothin' but a bird " is dead wrong. It's very clever, and the notion of chickens as international hitmen is very appealing and offbeat. I don't know if rhyme is your friend here--I don't know that the end rhyme adds anything to the piece, and I think it forces you into some uncomfortable structure and syntaz. That said, the originality and unusual nature of the idea behind the piece wins the day.

[Stutztown]

What would you recommend other than an end rhyme scheme? I was using that as a tool to keep the reader moving, but I do see how it can make things awkward. When I think of poetry I always think "end rhyme", but the more poetry I see the more that isn't the case.

[W.k.kortas]

Well, you can have near-rhyme or slant-rhyme, or even internal rhyme, or just let the rhyme scheme fall by the wayside altogether. I'm not anti-rhyme, understand, but sometimes rhyme can make you use words that might not be your first choice, and then the tail is wagging the dog.