Tim,
While I accept that you may or may not "like" the repeated words in my exercise, I question your saying they are "in lieu of rhyme." In fact my specific goal here was to create a form that repeated the L1 end-word in the L4 position, using it in a different grammatical/syntactical way. Therefore, what I have is a repetend, whcih I don't see as being "in lieu of" a rhyme.
Accepting for the sake of argument that the repetend should stay, then your objection might best be answered by not rhyminf L2 of each stanza to L1, thus exorcising the ghost of rhyme altogether. Alternatively, perhaps my attempt at "repetend" is doomed, too artificial?
I repeat, the idea here was a new "form". I am fascinated by the various forms that entail the use of repetends, but think that by and large villanelles, triolets and the like come across as unnatrually forced because the repetends come in such large chunks. Apparently modern poets think so too; hence, the current trend towards radical variation of the repetend in these poems.
Taking my key from that, I said to myself "Why not reduce the repetend to a single word?" and thus freed up the entire line for variation, as it were. The tw`o words, incidentally (dream and decline) are apposite to each other, consonant with each other, and each absolutely central to the poem itself.
I'm not trying to "justify" the poem btw, in the sense of saying it's better than it is; I'm trying to see if the form itself is justifiable...
(robt.)
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