I dreamed of a street only to show you I can’t write verse in iambic pentameter

Just so that you know, I can’t write verse in iambic pentameter. Not really.

For instance: Last night I’d dreamed of this street back in my hometown, back when I was young, where my cousin lived and my friends lived, and at times it really seemed all our friends lived in that street: It was a short block-length dead-end street, a cul-de-sac in a fancy neighborhood over the bridge & across the river, on the other side of town, where the well-to-do people lived, and that particular street was no exception. All houses were large and comfortable, and most of them had dogs and swimming pools. All houses had kids ranging from eight to twelve.
In hindsight, it was a Lilliputian neighborhood in that aspect: The age of its inhabitants seemed to range from eight to twelve years old, plus their mothers and their maids, with all the fathers off to work.

I dreamed of this kid who lived two houses away from my cousin: He had an older brother straight out of Beverly Hills 90210, and a German Shepherd who must have outlived Connor McLeod (yet retained both its neck and a joyful, playful spirit).
I dreamed of the boy’s dog last night, and upon waking I felt the irresistible urge to put it down to paper- but in a special way- like in an “ode to childhood” kind of way- and this is where the iambic pentameter comes in:

I had been reading that Neil Gaiman book M**** lent me a few weeks ago and it was a book of short tales, but not only tales per se but short pieces of texts done in several different forms of text and poetry and etc: Like, there was a sestina in there, and he also rambles on verses in iambic pentameters too. And if there’s one thing I absolutely love about Gaiman is that he’s very similar to Jack Kerouac in that sense: In the sense he transmits to the reader how much he loves writing. The sheer act of writing, you know? And makes you wanna write as well.
So hey, I decided, I’m going to put the piece about the boy and his dog in verse, in iambic pentameter, no less.

But of course things are not easy as they seem.

A iambic pentameter means each line must have five sets (penta-, etc) of weak-stress syllable followed by a strong-stress syllable. Hence, ten syllables per line, like this: Weak, Strong, Weak, Strong, Weak, Strong, etc… adding up to ten syllables total.
It’s supposed to end with a strong syllable. I think whenever a line of verse ends with a strong-stress syllable, it’s called a male verse, or something like that. But I’m not sure.
I mean, I’m not really into poetry and stuff. And it sure seems easier in theory, because doing it is a b*tch.
Here’s what I came up with, anyway:

Last night I dreamt of this street back when we
were all kids in my(…)

The above lines were meant to be the first verse into the poem, the first couple of lines of the first verse, even though I quit before I even completed the second line…
But regardless of either my sloth or incompetence, here’s the breakdown to that sentence:

1 Last night [last=weak, night=strong]
2 I dreamt [I=weak, dreamt=strong]
3 of this [of=weak, this=strong]
4 street back [street=weak, back=strong]
5 when we [when=weak, we=strong]

1 were all [were=weak, all=strong]
2 but kids [but=weak, kids=strong]
3 In my [in=weak, my=strong]
4 …?...
5 …?...

At least so as to give you a better notion of the pentameter thing.
But there’s a problem here:

Not only I couldn’t even complete the second sentence, I remain a little unsure as to whether I really got the whole “syllable” thing straight: Right off the bat I’ve noticed I’ve kept myself within the safe (safer?) aegis of the one-syllable word: Night and last and so on, correctly presuming it would make things easier for me on the weak/strong thing.
But… and this is a big but in here… I’m still unsure whether I’m actually capable of differentiating a weak-stress syllable from a strong one, or I’m just calling it as per my own convenience.

So the project fell through. Also because (& first & foremost), as all posts here, I’m writing this at work in-between the beats of Excel spreadsheets and incoming e-mails and crazy Seinfeld-ian business meetings and so on.
Maybe I’m due giving another look at the Gaiman book before I return it to M****… because hilariously as it seems, I’m sure as hell having a hard time benchmarking my stuff upon Milton and Shakespeare here…

Anyhow.
I guess in order to better wrap things up here I should come up with a hook in the end, tying the resolution of letting go off the verse project, to the boy’s dog from the dream.
This is the best I came up with, at such short notice:

Name of the dog was P***, which was seemed oddly similar to Poe, as in Edgar Alan but pronounced differently. I was planning on saying whether Poe’s written stuff in iambic pentameter but I have no idea, not really. And also no desire to have it googled up.
But hey, the whole Weak-Strong, Weak-Strong notion seems so easy, I guess even a dog could pull it off. Or a raven.
Not me, though, apparently.



…But before we call in the curtains on this one, one last question to the attentive reader: How many sentences in this post were actually written in iambic pentameter?

Smoke and mirrors, man… it’s all done with smoke and mirrors…