Rhymes and Reason
 

Why can’t masculine end-words rhyme with feminine end-words?


Ups and Downs

What’s wrong with male and female rhymes?
Do he’s and she’s have gender wartimes?

Do they commit some gender crimes
from writing rules declared in past times?

How about a rhyme that mimes
unrelated sounds joined sometimes?

Or if our song of mating chimes
with the clashing acts of hot times?

Dangling bits, like participles adrift,
are at best lonely, if not desperate.




Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the best I could do.

I like it, though in my idiolect it’s DES-per-ET, in yours DES-pret (also mine when, uh, I'm desperate for a rhyme!).

Serious question, by the way. After seeing a number of critiques of "the error," I went through a few copies of the recently lamented demise of Measure and found that about half of the rhymes were male/female. Not to mention in tons of other poems. It's my hobby in second childhood, so I'm not so extremist that rhymes must be perfect kisses.

I like rhymes that don`t, I must admit.