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In some circles, hope is a four-letter word,

Whereas in others, doubt is a shade beyond forgiveness

Rough edges hewn and shorn, evened out and paved in

Line, tarred tomorrow’s unconcerned with yesterday’s dream

Love, can be that square peg that actually can, fit into the

Roundest of holes

Foliage, wrinkled and worn

Time-tested yet ignored

For it is this type of person

Who fully understands and appreciates

The meaning of a kiss—slow and

Moist,

echoic is the sound of the most silencing of voices

Cats Vs. Dogs

In the morning, after first stretch

The not-yet-awaken snarl in contempt

Playfully in the afternoon they jump about,

Hopping from chair to chair, from room to room,

At suppertime, they calmly wait

For leftovers and scraps to fill their plates,

Vying for dominance, they stand their ground,

Assertiveness of appetite, here, friends square against

Brother and kin, all for that natural, necessary inhibition

Yet when time for sleep comes for all,

To Switzerland they do flee, and revel in

The comfort of a bedding of neutrality

A quick one I've been working on.  Not sure it's completely finished yet, but thought it read well enough to share, any comments will be welcome.  Would you think this needs a bit more trimming, or perhaps an additional stanza or so to really hammer the overriding metaphor down?  

It's Tuesday, and we all know what that means. Yep, it's time for another Open Link Night over at D'verse.  At 3pm the pub doors will open up, and the ultra-talented community of poets will begin to flow through the doors.  Stop on by for some incredible pints of poetry and while you're there, why not share a poem of your own.

The Connection Between A Rhythm and a Stare

 A floe of Gypsy temptation,

     Thinly skims the apex of the surface,

A slue of dull possession,

     Swiftly spinning from it’s stance

There is a collection of delineation,

     An elementary beguilement in askance

There is a sidling of salvation,

     An impropriety of sauntering proportions

Agog, too eager

     To enliven the mirage that blindly

Inhibits the colluding prescriptions that

Control the signatories of sight

                 

Within the wherewithal of sanity,

Exists a microcosmic spasm,

Infatuated by impossibility and the relics of its kind,

Where, if not attended to, imagination may run amok—

And become rampant, writhing to the contagions of such designs

And in premature conclusion, I must declare, that there’s a curious delusion—a connection between a rhythm and a stare

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I was very honored and privileged to have been interviewed by the very talented Laurie Kolp for this week's Pretzels & Bullfights Spotlight at D'Verse.  I'd really appreciate it if you could swing by and read the interview and learn a little bit more about little old me.  And yeah, she even made me sound really interesting:)  All kidding aside though, she really did a tremendous job with the questions and putting the post together. 

On that note, I'd just like to take the time to send, A big thank you to Laurie and to D'verse for hosting such a great series and of course, for thinking highly enough of me and my work to shine the spotlight on me this week.

  

A Sampling of Short Verse

Shackled!

Breath—impeded.

Motility—a myth.

Tortured by your own worst warden,

Damning!

Cinquain. 2-4-6-8-2 syllable count

It was all a sham

The song never played

The coupling of palms never happened

The eyes refused to meet

She never existed

A palinode is a verse that takes back or retracts something originally said.  This is a variation on that. Here, I'm taking a fictitious memory and in what appears to be several moments of reflection, revealing how the previously remembered is understood to be false.

The impossible is often only improbable,

Improbable lines often connect in secrecy,

Secrecy is the mark of lieutenants and vampires,

Vampires are more afraid of themselves than you are they,

(They) never asked for such appellations

Anadiplosis is a poetic tool where a line begins with the last word of the previous line. Variations are possible as well, (i.e. ending with an emotion, and beginning with same emotion etc..).  Here I used it to create a short verse, where the tool itself is the feature.  

Today, heaven lost friends,

Friends, lost heaven today

Love, through ascension; Shrapnel was removed

Removed, was shrapnel; ascension through love

Antimetabole is a poetic tool where a line is the reversal of the previous line.  Here, I simply used two of these, combining the four lines into a short verse of it's own.

Vague stories, imbuing impossible metamorphoses

I, alone, transcended eternity’s illumination?

Rhopalic Verse is a tool where each word of a line adds a syllable to the word before.  1-2-3-4-5 is the climbing sequence for each of these lines. Combined together, these two lines create a very short poem.

Head on over to D'verse, where for this week's Poetics, I'm hosting an evening of short verse.  The doors open at 3pm.  See you there.

Lunar Possession

Vociferous stranger, vacant you swoon

Dispersing anathemas with each step

Whence meters find their distant promenade

Benumbed sentry traipsing beneath grey moons

With the countenance of dark secrets kept

As rays lower upon your unmarked grave

The furtive glance secretes visions of ruin

As spindrifts thrash forth their echoic stet

Forever haunting the taciturn stave

Hunger asphyxiates the sated tune

While the parched arrhythmia slowly wept

For the heart knows what the enemy craves

The boy shook, as the thirsting neon crept

Whereas a mother’s love, prayed while he slept

  

 Over at D'Verse, Sam presents us a unique twist to the sonnet form for this week's Formforall, something he calls the Trireme Sonnet.  It was certainly fun putting this piece together, think I wound up deviating from the pentameter a bit in places, but other than that, followed the 10 syllable, ABC-ABC-ABC-ABC-(Choice of AA, BB, or CC Heroic Couplet).  I definitely recommend you check out his article and see what the poets of D'Verse came up with. Cheers!