Bardness

[ARCHIVE: Iambic pentameter is truly the height of pretentiousness.]

Now hear: I am an honest man as one
who ever held for his profession in
a public office. And a patient man
as ever that which saw himself the charge
of teaching youths with scholarly profession.
Noble, yes, as much as he who thought
to entertain within his heart the thought
of finding for himself companionship.
And handsome... here as handsome 'cept for all
the gifts that God bestowed upon myself
as well as those which give my peers their sight.

'Tis not within my mind to waste my time
at folly and at sport for that which won't
nor shan't (excepting can't) be won because
of measures that by Grace of God are mine
to call my own. As bound by this, my own
mortality and flesh, I live as one
would sure expect of one who is as I;
my mind, my stock, my disposition; glad
to have the time which fate as granted me.

Let no man judge my deeds, excepting he
that fell upon ill fate as I to break
commandment yet did find within himself
integrity enough to strike his own black heart
to dumbness, living all the rest his days
a shadow life, forever silent whence his crew
in jest or earnest t'will ask his thoughts upon
the very thing he once did fill his nights
and days and every hour, both waking,
sleeping and between. Alone may he
be fit to criticize my enterprises,
base as they may be, but still as faint
and subtle, enigmatic as the ether.

The time has come to draw the sword from out
my chest, as cleaved into that depth behested
so with mine own thoughts, and wretch'd inside
by mine own hand, protested all the while
by my better self. To 'xtract so deep
a cut as this, that I have worn so long
and proud, beheld alone within my mind
is trauma, plain and true. A poet such
as I doth know that art comes all the quicker
from a gash you nurse without intent
of healing, but with mind to keep it broached
so as to feed upon one's own distress,
A sick and parasitic bond from which
a man can gleam a mockery of poise.

What good, this self-devouring? What end is reached,
by this self-masturbation? Even this,
my "secret mind," demands an audience.
No, better now to cut the quick and stymie
future pains, despite prospective loss
of art, of voice, of prose which speaks to kin.

What worth the gains of other's praise
If she, the muse, is lost all days?

[It deviates a little, true, but so do most IP examples.]