What happened to metre and feet?

Why how and when did the poets abandon them?

Were the strictures too tight?

Did they suffocate their flights

Of fancy?

 Did imagery find

the stranglehold of an iamb

or a trochee too tight?

And in escaping the murderous attempt

Of rhythm

Did it fly unfettered

Discovering new skies, new heights, new ways to argue with words

To lament lost loves

Lost verse?

Were Alexandrines and Pentameters

Too stuffy and too closed?

And did the Open Form

The caged bird expose?

Although that one sang in rhyme.

And she whose eyes

“Hard as crushed diamonds”

Transformed the form

And then escaped through the oven

What, then from that yeast did rise?

A bubble to annihilate

All bombs.