The Decanal Inquiry is a poetic narrative intended to complain about a chosen subject, originating in The Bottomless Geyser. The form guides poets during improvised performances. The poem is a single couplet. Use of vivid imagery is characteristic of the form. Forms of parallelism are common throughout the poem, in that certain lines are required to maintain phrasing and they have similar grammatical structures. Each line has five feet with a syllable weight pattern of long-short-long (quantitative cretic pentameter). The ending of each line of the poem shares the same rhyme. The second line of the couplet presents a different view of the subject of the first line. The first line concerns the past. The second line concerns the future.