I asked last week if anyone knew the cantata I was riffing off and noone answered. Not one of you recognised Carmina Burana, one of the best-known classical (Late Romantic/German Expressionist, specifically) pieces of all time. Fortuna Imperiatrix Mundi, bitches.

Well Thunderdome, it's time to complete your educations and dredge up the forgotten lore because we're getting motherfucking classical up in this piece.

Remember in high school when your English teacher said you were going to learn "Iambic Pentameter" tomorrow so you decided to stay home and jack off to your dad's old playboy collection? Me neither. Point being, your challenge this week is:

Write a piece of blank verse poetry about a journey.

What is blank verse? This is:

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John Motherfucking Milton posted:
O Hell! what doe mine eyes with grief behold,
Into our room of bliss thus high advanc’t
Creatures of other mould, earth-born perhaps,
Not Spirits, yet to heav’nly Spirits bright
Little inferior; whom my thoughts pursue
With wonder, and could love, so lively shines
In them Divine resemblance, and such grace
The hand that formd them on thir shape hath pourd.

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Blank verse is unrhymed iambic pentameter. A line of iambic pentameter consists of ten beats, divided into five iambs. Iambic Pentameter = five iambs. An iamb is a pair of beats with the stress falling on the second beat. If the stress does not fall on the second beat it is not an iamb and you have failed your family, house and nation.

Well, that's a lie. If the stress on the first beat, it's called a trochee. If it's on both, it's a spondee and if it's on neither, it's pyrrhic. These are called substitutions and you are allowed no more than two per line. Get that? It's iambic pentameter, so a majority of the line must be made up of iambs. A good guide can be found here.

And of course:

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Stuporstar posted:
Executive Order: Next week your main character must wear a silly hat, toupee, or full wig, regardless of context or what the judges come up with for a prompt. I won't be judging because I'll be on vacation, but that doesn't matter. I want to see ridiculous headgear. NO FEDORAS.

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Because it's poetry and poetry doesn't necessarily have a main character, I'm switching this up to the following:

Your poem must contain reference to a silly hat, toupee or full wig. Considering the prompt, this headgear is allowed to be metaphorical but it must be silly. Bonus points to anyone who can make Stuporstar laugh.

Poetry's strength is being able to say a lot while writing very little, so consider that an upper limit, not a goal.

In addition, each judge will have two hidden hats: a surprise bonus hat and a hidden dog-shit bullet hat. If you write about the former, you get bonus points. If you write about the latter, you lose points. We won't be telling each other our hats, so it's entirely possible to get penalized and rewarded with the same hat. Good luck. You'll need it.