Cheaters

[dukealien]

I'll tell you what I hate 'bout meter:
it seems like everyone's a cheater
with magic 'postrophies like 'ere
and ne'er and where-the-bleeping e'er
it makes the iambs work. Well, hell
then I'll just make up language too
with lazy arr'gance like you've never
dreamed! Like a banker far behind
in Scrabble, I'll add th's like taxes.
It's effortless, 'cause poemeth after
poemeth just butchers nat'ral speech.
It's stucketh in my brain! Yes, I
can play that game. 

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Hello all! Can I get some feedback on the meter? I'm trying to use trochaic and Pyrrhic substitutions as well as both masculine and feminine endings. Thank you ><

I've never particularly cared for the meter.   It's the last gasp of the supposedly rational French at the time of the Terror - but what's universal about some fraction of the distance along an imaginary line drawn on the Earth (a minor planet of an unremarkable star) which, strictly speaking, is *curved*, darn it anway!  Distance is anthropocentric:  live with it!  Give me the good old yard of two cubits; the meter is just the cloth-yard of a human with long arms (though making it decimal was pretty slick... but ten fingers, y'know).

[/rant]Oh... *that* meter.  Perfect meter can be hypnotic (as I'd reason to learn recently), especially on short lines.  If your poem be's rather than means, probably an advantage.  Otherwise, some Popish variance to align bumps in the reading with impacts in the meaning seem appropriate... including those created with the apostrophe.  Like the inversion, though, unintended or forced variance can usually be smoothed out with some amount of work.  Just sayin'.

The "th" thing thpeakth of either King Jameth or a lithp when uthed today.  Betht not, otherwithe.