The poem is in three parts, with each part having two stanzas of four lines and one stanza of six lines (except for the last stanza, which is eight lines — more on that later). The quartets follow an alternating rhyme scheme, abab, where the sentence structure of the last line of the first quartet is reversed to make the last line of the second quartet; the final sextet is rhymed ababab, where the a lines are loosely rhymed and always end similarly on the same phrase, and the b rhymes are more strict. The metre is generally iambic, with a few cheats, notably in the first line of the sextets, EM-ma, EM-ma, where the first unstressed syllable is missing so it's more trochaic. The lines alternate between tetrameter and trimeter. The poem is written in the first person, from the point of view of the infected, speaking to Emma. It describes how Emma is taken by the apotheosis at the end of The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals.
Naturally, spoilers ahead.
repetition
I wanted to use a lot of repetition to give the poem an air of inescapability, the feeling of a closed loop.
[insert emma screaming is this a fucking loop? gif]
This called for a tight rhyme scheme of simple one- to two-syllable words, and lots of repeated lines. The first instance — she knows it's her we seek / it's her we seek, she knows — was serendipitous, and it took a lot of trial and error to conjure up something similarly blessed for the next two instances of this. Not only did the line have to be reversible, the first two words had to be she + a verb, and the lines have to make sense in the context of the narrative. I really like the verbs I came up with in the end, as they ended up summarising the whole poem in three acts: she knows, she screams, she weeps. And so we capture our Final Girl.
imperfection
But the poem is not without flaws, just like how the Hatchetfield High School girls don't always speak in unison. Half-rhymes alternate with rich rhymes, feet skip and trip, but at the end Emma is assimilated and everything is in order. The third final sextet even gets an additional couplet that turns it into an octet, bringing it into harmony with the quartets (4 + 4 = 8) and giving closure to the structure. No need to rush forward anymore; we have Emma.
inevitability
So if you already know what's coming, what keeps you reading? The ending of TGWDLM, while it is a twist ending, is the conclusion of the first show in Hatchetfield and so is known to everyone in the fandom. So this isn't about what happens; it's about how. In the show, Emma is captured in the space of a song; I propose a more drawn-out scenario, maybe weeks, where Emma is trapped in the Starlight Theater long enough that she has the whole building memorised, and is able to get around without drawing the attention of the infected. Of course, it doesn't matter. The apotheosis is inevitable. She is not escaping the infected, they're just choosing to wait for her. That's why the first line ends with Emma, you will come to us / no matter what you do. She can keep walking, but she's still walking towards her apotheosis.
I've made some callbacks to the lyrics of previous songs, to tie this in with the rest of the show: some subtle, like ending consecutive lines with stop and show or remixing Inevitable's heartbreaking Emma, I'm sorry, you lost / your way; some blatant, like let him come and the man you trust.
The second stanza depicts a reshoot, to borrow the filmmaker's term, of Paul and Emma's reunion, giving her a little hope only to crush her more when it is taken away. I think the Paul that Emma meets in Inevitable was already fully infected, and any hints otherwise at Paul's consciousness surviving are just Pokey trying to plant false hope in Emma (and by extension, the audience) so she follows them into the chorus. Paul isn't there anymore; he's one of them. And I love that moment when Emma looks at his face and realises that. By the way, I think Jon Matteson and Lauren Lopez (especially Lauren!) did a wonderful job with this scene. There's nothing like the amusement at finally hearing Paul's singing voice followed by the horror from thinking about its implications.
The third stanza, though, is my invention. It's what I think happens to Emma after the infected drag her off backstage. The only named character who gets turned onstage is Ted, at the beginning of America Is Great Again. General Macnamara shines a blue light in his face after he is shot in the head. It's the same blue light that introduces an infected Charlotte before she kicks ass in Join Us and Die. Emma's a fighter, they would have to hold her down, even with her broken leg. But there's a whole cast of them and only one of her. She was never going to win.
When I posted this poem I got a lot of screaming, which I found absolutely delightful. That's what I was going for. Sometimes I think there's not a place in the world left for rhyming metred horror fan poetry, but then these things happen. And isn't nice that everyone's singing the same song, even for a little while.