Okay. Attempt number forty-two at the Destry poem. The previous forty-one have been consigned to the garbage bin where they rot, along with assorted fish-heads and broccoli stalks.

I suspect my poems stink more than the decaying foodstuff.

I’m reluctant to give up rhyme, though so far the ones I’ve chosen verge on the desperate. (For example, I just realised that Destry and ‘broccoli’ might go together. Destry in the vestry, sweet and tasty as broccoli. I know. The smell makes you gag; maggots are gathering around my pen.)

Rhyme can be tricky, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be sneaky with it. There’s no reason to simply use end-stopped lines all the time. What about enjambement (when one line flows on to the other)? Or half rhymes? No one would argue that these weren’t respectable literary techniques. I feel inspired.

She seared my vision, this angel called Destry,

And I knew she was the best she

Could be. Her last name, Camberwick,

Was magic, a miracle, a wondrous trick

Of sound. I was totally smitten,

A love-lost kid, a freaked-out kitten …

Forgive me while I bang my head against the wall until it hurts.

My head, not the wall.