Sandbox: On Poetry - A Sonnet and More

In wielding words, be wise and wary - don't get stuck in a rut.
In poetry, you must think clearly - don't rely on your gut.
One thinks a poet writes in meter with clear rhyming but
That limits all your options and will, frankly, leave you shut.

Out.  Shut out.  Of opportunities you might have had.
A bungled ending, illustrating well the point I make:
Rhyme and meter can be good but also can be bad.
Be cautious in their use.  Too much of either and you'll break.

Your work will break.  Your poem.  Your thing.  Whatever 'tis you write.
The words I want to speak don't fit precisely in the scheme,
And so it is my rhymes are forced with grammar, then, to fight.
As well, the rhyme can force some words that aren't quite what I mean.

Lo, when shackled thusly does my brain begin to numb.
And meter doesn't have to be "da DUM da DUM da DUM."

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Meter and rhyme are perfectly fine, but don't get caught in their trap.
They are a trap.  A trap for both writer and reader.
Did you take a small pause between the third and fourth line?
Take it out of its poetic context; read the line aloud.
"da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM" gets old, and is inaccurate beside.

"One thinks a poet writes in meter with clear rhyming but that limits all your options and will, frankly, leave you shut."

(But how to convey what I mean?)
(To give the right meter for the sentence in question)
(There'd have to be some sort of sudden cessation)
(Of poetic-ish-ness and aural relation.)
[Enough!  It'd help if you stopped this digression.]
With dits and with DAHs is its metric stress stated:
.-.-.-.-..--...-...-...-.-.- *
A meter guides a verse.  It should not arbitrate a rate of stress.
Iambic meter is often forced and sounds like grinding gears.
When words won't fit quite into place, the price is paid by our ears.

Let the words flow naturally.
It helps if you trim the forced rhyme.

"One thinks a poet writes in meter with clear rhyming but that limits all your options."

Remove the constraints of a single meter or rhythm.
You may find better word choice therewithin.

"People may think that a poem must rhyme and must fit in a pattern simply because their conception of poetry comes mainly from limericks."

But then you wouldn't have a sonnet anymore.

Free verse, then, is it?
"No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job."
So said T.S. Eliot.

The point of the matter is this:
Meter and Rhyme are important in poetry.
Mind them, but do not be shackled by them.

[Self-referential post-modern punchline.]

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*To be less incongruous, one could pretend this line was pronounced
"mm MM mm mm MM mm mm MM mm mm MM-ed."

I refer to "words I don't quite mean" in the sonnet.  That refers to my somewhat hypocritical statement, "don't rely on your gut."
It rhymed.  Sorry.