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!

Time is a Caravan

Time is like a caravan,

Sometimes toting monuments,

At other’s chipped and broken pebbles,

Released prematurely from it’s elder stone

Found From Within The Talon's Side

A flagrant volition—a violation, an action and a scowl—determined aggravation from the tongue of pawn—intrigued by the rapturous ideology presented in the late—by an allegorical phantasm of chance, an echoic beauty—one whom not even time could prevent the inviting allegation to conceive it’s concocted arrhythmia to the weather-worn hopes of one as he—

 Held in awe, by a desperate princess, bearing fruitful presents and an unholy proclamation of some love-stricken scheme that preyed endearingly, to every impossible shard of dream ever awoken from—

Encased was a promise, a scented sentence if detected, for this vow, was considerable in all it stood for to the two at hand, yet dynamically catastrophic by those in opposition.  This love, between two such as these, was in fact, in direct disobedience of the caste each were forced to lead their lives upon.

Sufferance would indeed be remarked. Damnation would, in all effect, be set in spades, even as twin bounties corrugate between the sky and all the Heavens it protects, and the reams of suet still freshly stifled, as the heart’s contents remained—where still set the bone, strangling upon the saltiest of teardrops ever wrung.

Vitality was denied through end of breath. Parturient strands unabashed by the chaotic consequence at bay—unintended for, yet persisting nonetheless, were its strides—a collateral

Striation, bound by sinew’s string, looping through the bitter entanglements of the amnesia stricken torso to which the factions fortuitously release, divide—segregating lower lip, pierced by steel and ember and the upper manifestations—the mutations estranged by first sin’s blaspheming kiss.

Protracted involvement. Sacrilege upon the altar of the

Withered. Flesh of songbird, broken wing—yet clung it had, dearly, paying ultimate price to perform it’s duty, clinging tightly with pride, onto the message placed within its’ talon’s

Side.

Tuesday is once again upon us, and that, of course, brings about the greatest night of poetry around.  Open Link Night is a world-wide phenomenon, where lover's of poetry get to read, listen to, write and share poetry of all type.  Make sure you stop by D'Verse starting today at 3pm.  Cheers!

 

Imagination In A Time Of Denial

I’m not sure what I was thinking, as if what’s been static for thirty-eight years would change in the blink of an eye. No, thinking like that is what people keep to themselves, yet, I continuously slip open the side of the drapes, crinkle over the edge of the blinds, and peek, out into the world beyond these walls, where, lo and behold, the same image that’s been etched into these eyes for my entire life, was still as it had always been.

Then I closed my eyes, pondering deep within.  Here, I traveled to some other realm, a place where nothing seemed or felt the same.  The beauty was outrageous, the air so pure and fresh.  My eyes were then reawakened by the unfamiliar smile spawned upon my face.

Quickly I went to the window, pushed the drapes slightly to the side, crinkled over the edge of blind and peered outside.  It was here, at this time, that I realized, for the first time in my life, everything, everything I’d ever known, had changed, and the pinch felt as real as it ever had.