I saw them frozen on the trail: Villanelle

The ice has held us far too long.
We are as mute as it is thick:
We are too cold, too cold for song.

Observer those limbs which once were strong!
Now tattered muscle on bent sticks
The ice has held us far too long.

There are no words, no wrights or wrongs
To save us from the blizzard's pricks;
We are too cold, too cold for song.

We have no breath with which to long
Or moan through some strange wind-magic.
The ice has held us far too long.

We once had mouths--those now are gone
To frost of our own artifice.
We are too cold, too cold for song.

If you see us--(think! frozen in throngs
Of ignorance) remember this,
The ice that holds us for too long.
We are too cold, too cold for song.


(HOLY CRAP.)

I just wrote a form a day, (nearly) every day.

More thinking about that later.

Tybarn

I called
and felt
the wind
(your breath)
upon my neck behind the only
veil of consciousness and loving grace

This one is about ghosts: Tritina

Who can we call?
(Ghostbusters! but I can't see us
hanging by the telephone at home

hoping that they'll home
in on a signal, some misplaced call
for help none of us

truly believe in.) None of us
have hearth or home
in mind or soul. Call

us foolish--we hear the phantoms call us home.

Triolet: Beware the Whip

Beware the whip.
Beware the yoke.
(the words came easy to the fist)
Beware the whip--
beware the death of Feeling's grip
(she smiled slightly as she wrote).
Beware the whip.
Beware the yoke.

Terza Rima

Terza Rima is one of my favourite so far.

It was not death, nor any age
of reckoning within the green;
I felt no silence stir my page

it was a shadow to be seen
a kind of flutter in the chest
a kind of sign from rook to queen

who knows life stirs, but honour bests
the rigid tiling of the board--
so holds life squirming to his breast.

Who held his days as in a hoard,
who felt his time like summer tide
like birds who fell when others soared

Such greatness I cannot abide!
O let me stay my course awhile
and smile and hear the others cry

and hear the others cry, and smile

Tetractys

Interesting this is.

Yoda I am not.

I
don't feel
any pain
at all at all
(he swore, staggering drunk into the night)

I Am So Glad This One Is Short: Tanka

My house
will be
decorated
with the
wild flowers
of your mind.

I am, of course, lying: Sonnet!

Whatever words may come, will come, and stay--
I cannot amputate from me my very limbs
so terribly or gangrenous might they
display themselves to Reason's haughty hymns.
My lines may stretch and grow so like a skin
to let my soul come forth on inky song--
there are no words abandoned, words that sin
so thoroughly as to be left alone.
If I had never writ not made a sound
I would accept my own mind's mortal coil:
But since I sing with birds from holy ground
I cannot die still having burnt my toil.
No absolute shall from from my old pen. But note:
I am content. I thought. I sang. I wrote.

Sestina, foo'

I am confused as how to actually produce this form--I've gotten a bunch of schemes from a bunch of sources--so this may not actually be one. But it has a form, it does.

In other news--POSSIBLY LONGEST POEM I HAVE EVER WRITTEN.

Written After A Kidnapping In The Woods On A Cold Evening

They come for me when winter's hounds are near
and darkness upon darkness kills the day,
beneath that silent blanket of our fears,
beneath the weary sparrow's southern way.
They come for me with torches burning bright
against the stifling darkness of the night.

I do not hear them come upon me til
I feel the horses' breathing taste my neck
and send the burrowed knife of fear render me still
as they surround me like mist--"Demons, detect
(I say with much more bravery than I feel)
that I--" They look, and fire melts the steel.

"Be quiet, youngling--yours is not the place
to speak upon we armies of the night.
We are the ones who see the Fiend's very face
so filled with spurnèd virtue turned to spite:
Can you produce the majesty of Hell?"
I hear my death close itself on its knells.

And I am tak'n and stolen then away
upon those beasts as solid as the wind
that comes up from the sea, wind tinged with waves
and salt and blood. I boldly try to spin
against my bonds to see the starts that gave
me life, that gave me death that eve
(and this for no true reason I'd believe!).

I cannot help but cry aloud-- "Oh God,
"How came I to this fate? Through some cruel jest
of Time or Place or Fancy? Did I nod
away my vigilance, my earnèd faith--"
I speak no more, yet silence does not ring;
I cease my words, and so begin to sing.

I cannot say where come this heav'nly song
Or why the riders suddenly stop their race;
I sing with mortal voice divine along
to cries of rage as I am loosed by grace.
"He has the Song! Begone, my brothers, fly!"
And I am left alone--the dark and I.

And so, if left alone on darker nights,
And fear no winter that does come with spring,
Let none come take you--free your soul and sing.

Rondelet

i am so tired
that i cannot go back to sleep
i am so tired
i do not have the strength required
to think of rhymes or poems deep--
to writer my forlorn masterpiece
I am so tired.

(Did Eliot write this badly when he was young?)

Rondeau

I remember it well:
The sound of the bells
The holier shades
Through forest and glades
That drowned our mourning knells;

Those infantile hells
Of masking our swells
Of sadness or rage--
I remember them well.

Yet for all I can tell
There was always the spell
Of meandering made
Meditation by shade
Or the pine-needle smell.
I remember it well.

Limerick

I am disgusted with myself.

I used to love limericks for what you
could pull out of them if they got you.
Then I found acrostics
and then went agnostic
'bout that poetry stuff that they taught you.

Dear God.
I
hate
limericks.

Pleiades

Tantramar.

There's no freezing here, no,
the seasons won't allow it because of
this -- can't you hear it?
This shift of sight from day to night
the sound of queen against knight
two minds two hands two heads two hearts
tick-tocking hello.

Nonet

I like the degeneration implied in a nonet(in case you can't figure it out--nine, eight, seven, etc. syllables down to one).  Form thus dictates my function? Entropy of the poetic? Who knows.

we who have never forgotten the
crack of the neighbour's whip then the
rage of the earth in the night
from which we rose and thrived
we are beggars still
free but only
beggars, still
beggars
still

Ode

I know nothing at all

when I walk among your wispy trees,
tripping on headstones and
catching myself on
monuments to the long dead.

you are your own garden of
dates and names
knowledge unfthomable
buried and gnawed at until
it crumbled into the earth
fell into the grass
grew into the mist
that whispers at my feet--

you are still with the contentment
of life lived and
(not honoured but)acknowledged
with plastic and  tears and
tulips from the gate.

you do not ask
for proof or written confession.

you remain
like a cradle to my weeping child.
that is all I ask

and all I receive.

Senryu

Me, slipping? Never.

Silence is the
only real thing, man--
do you know what I'm saying?

Parallelismus Membrorum

I swear I wrote this last night. Also, not a lillibonnelle because that form is stupid, too, and not really what I would call legitimate. This one's been here for about three thousand years, so take that, new forms!

Everything is broken
and everything is whole.
The empty
has been filled.
You are too much
and too little's grandchild.
Every sword
is your shield now,
every creed
a denial of faith.
Be not afraid
but let fear transport you
through the open doors
of love.

Lento

I kind of like this one--it was created very recently, but the interior rhyme scheme is tricky to hold but fun to pull along. An interesting reversal.

Tomorrow: Lilibonelle!


I have not met a tree that walks
desired to find its roots again--
"Supply my aching limbs with rest?
"To die! rather than stagnant pain!

"Though I must walk, yet I will stride
thro' forest to 'scape these thoughts of her."
So too do I refuse to rest:
O nature of the wanderer!

Kyrielle

Tomorrow: Lento!

If trees could speak as well as you
You would be silenced by that view
Of memory nailed against their grain--
A bark that sings against our pain.

You'd write no fields of poppies red
Or let grass cradle soldiers' heads.
(These leaves drank blood, and held no stain!
O shall the earth sing forth our pain?)

I have not wandered restless nights
In forest or in city light
Among the bodies of the slain
To hear the earth sing forth its pain--

But rather found unearnèd peace
Beneath the streetlamps and the leaves
And felt the wars washed by the rain.
Let not the earth sing forth our pain!

Reasons Why I Avoid Public Showers When I Can, #23

Three words:

Naked old men.


Uhhhhgggghh.

Haiku

Bit of a cheap one. Tomorrow: Kyrielle!

leaves are underground
to let the roots claw through the earth
and taste the winter air

Epistle

the nine things he left

1.
all wives are immigrants:
they run into women,
see the Old Country
and run home

2.
there is no second cry
for help;
there never is,
he finds
and sits back down

3.
strange to see old men in my friends' faces;
stranger still
not to see them
in mine

4.
Read your letters last night
and burned the last one
so I wouldn't know
the end.

5.
April is no time for poetry
because it makes you forget age
and sights of better days.
No man is old then.

6.
My body is real
because it sees itself
in the glistening ink
that runs behind
thought

7.
there is nothing for us here
there are no shadows here

8.
You say it has already left
it's passed us
like the growth of a tree
or a grandchild

9.
I beg to differ

Dorsimbra

American for fecking stupid.

"DORSIMBRA:  The Dorsimbra, a poetry form created by Eve Braden, Frieda Dorris and Robert Simonton, is a set form of three stanzas of four lines each.  Since the Dorsimbra requires three different sorts of form writing, enjambment can help to achieve fluidity between stanzas, while internal rhymes and near-rhymes can help tie the stanzas together."


In other words, a stolen hodgepodge.


the truth is in a true poetic form
not some half-baked amalgam from which come
some messy hodgepodge verses, all that mourn
the death of all that history has run.

(but hey! if verse
is all you call it, I suppose
we're free to form
deformities.)

this challenge fails to teach me more than what
I have been taught before--form's form, and that
brings forth no knowledge of the earth (unless
the truth is in a true poetic form.)

Dodoitsu

After one night of Charlestons
and slides, I have concluded
thus: It's in the twenties that
I should have been born.

Diamontes are Stupid

Some forms just suck.  I kind of didn't like writing this one!
Tomorrow: Dodoitsu.

sense
physical extrapolation
touching--feeling--smelling
reality, surrounding, flux, assumption
streaming--calculating--sensing
internal flux
thought

Clerihew

I do not like clerihews, but they're kind of fun to write. Maybe I should write more.

Tomorrow: Diamonte!

I moan the Curies
For their few progeny.
A sexual insensitivity
Brought by radioactivity?

Cinq-cinquaine

Today, a cinq-cinquaine; tomorrow, a clerihew.

A wind
As strong as love:
It's terrifying here--
So loud that you can feel
it fall.

I feel
as though I should
go in, or somehow try
to fix what falls from this old porch,
to pull

the trees
and branches down
with string from kites that hang
on our old walls like diagrams
of bone

or cast
a hunter's net
over my own backyard.
(to pull in leaves and rakes and old
rose-buds?

you're mad!
no creature seeks
a prey so large, so dense
it seems too light for truth itself.
Go in.)

Ballad

Today, a ballad; tomorrow, a cinq-cinquaine.

Oh let us walk, then, you and I,
In smiles despite the rain
That comes like ancient floods to eyes
Unburdened but untrained.

And you will dance the maypoles all
And kick the leaves away
And wash the street like some strange Fall
From one primordial day--

"The world is ending! That I know
as much as I can tell
Can we not let our gardens grow
But mourn our fates as well?"

And I will shudder, wait, and sigh
As you come back to me
With lightness from the stormclouds' height
A trail behind your feet.

So let us walk, then, you and I,
If smiles do bring the rain.
(If worlds must pay our sins with lies
Give me my sin again!)

I am not sure about it. Perhaps it's letting the form carry you rather than having your poem carry the form... To be found.

Abecedarian

So! This is how it's going to work until Nov. 30th.

Everyday, a new poetic form. I have been told by certain people that freeform is noform, which led me to form negative habits about structure and rhyme. So, take that! One poem a day, a different kind every day.

Today, abecedarian. Tomorrow, ballad.

aimless under
broken streetlights we let
causal notions of the sidewalk
draw us home.
enough of stepping, we think,
forever losing balance to move forward.
god, if only life were escalators!
hope is last century but I swear
I would stay near the railing and
just look at the advertisements on the sides,
knowing that at
least I'm
moving.
nothing would give me more pleasure than
opening it all up, cracking through asphalt and gravel,
pulp of the city glistening and exposed, city
qua city in our minds being (and
rightly so ) electricity under wires, breath and
sweat and
tears of the living and the dead
under all the pressure of buildings of
video conference and nothing without us
walking on it and pushing forward like
Xeno's paradox disproven.
yes--it's better to walk,
zenith passed or approaching.

The Gist

I'm submitting my poems to some magazines, so I have to remove these ones. All of my "poem" posts are now gone; sorry, guys. But I hope you'll understand.

Ancients

"If I could understand myself, I would be dead long ago."

He said it with a kind of hope.

Honest

And perhaps for the first time:

I am sorry. I am so, so sorry.

I Have Become My Characters

Is it fate that, as soon as I breathe age into his bones--as soon as the slightest weight begins to rest upon his tired shoulders--as soon as my lot is thrown into his--I feel that selfsame weight pulling on my veins?

Footsteps

It is, in the end, the perpertual shifting of weight, the movement, the uncertainty that lies at the heart of our very step that keeps us going forward--or falling, for that matter.

Questions I Would Ask Socrates, Part One

Did it hurt, Socrates?

The hemlock being the first part, your death being the second. I never bought all of your stoicism. Not for one second. You put on a brave face, as all are wont to do when they stare death in the eyes and Death stares back, looking like all of those men you've passed on the street and questioned and broken down--all those men who never quite understood what was happening to them when they felt the crumbling and lashed out, ran off, destroyed whatever uncertainty they felt within the cracks. You held your head high, you kept asking and probing and getting every little drop of truth out of their deep and bloody hearts. You went down the basement of their souls further than they've ever been before they had to run up those steps, scared of the darkness.

And yet--was there no doubt? Don't tell me that. No one could stand it. You must have questioned it. Yes, you'd say--I have lived a good life. But it would have meant nothing if it hadn't survived. What if Crito, Phaedo, Plato and all of the rest moved on? You're an old man. You could have been just an amusement; they couldn't have cared less. Worse, they could have cared more and gotten killed for it. All that work ruined.

And then, of course, the worst thought: I could have been wrong. No forms, no Good, no order in the universe--just singularity and chaos no matter where anything goes. None of your so-desired logic. Horrible, wouldn't that have been?


You seemed so glad of eternal sleep, but I know you better than that, Socrates. You act. You question. To slumber unaware for eternity would be worse than any other idea of death for you. The true philosopher never sleeps. It counters his nature, it makes him one of them--one of those horses you tried so valiantly to wake with your little gadfly sting.

You must have felt so weak, then--taking the hemlock and staring at them all, hoping that they'd understood. Hoping that they would continue to understand.

So honestly, Socrates--I admire your courage. I admire your strength, your unwavering loyalty towards things enormous and glorious and so, so much bigger than we can ever be, even in death. You were the strongest of us all.

But you must have been terrified.

Safe

“And that,” the professor concluded, slamming the vault's door shut, “is the MagnaSafe. Unbreakable. Uncrackable. One-of-a-kind.”

“How do you open it?” the reporter asked.

“Oh, it's a simple lock-and-key mechanism—let me...” He patted his pockets. Once. Twice.

“Damn. Damn. Damn,” he spluttered, red-faced.

“What?”

“Left the keys inside.”

Disturbing

Does my distaste for those pieces that acknowledge those demons inside show my optimistic idealism or the simple refusal to acknowledge my own?

Incoherent.

Sleep being the little-death of all things, I can only consider the suicide's plea to be caused from lack of dreaming.

Things I am Thankful For, Numbers 12 through 15

12. Couch forts. Temples of my childhood that allow me to return to what I hope I truly am. Death to all couch-haters!

13. Lack of time. How precariously perched my life is at this moment, flitting between necessary meetings and thoughts of possibilities of stuff that will soon take me up in a maelstrom of action, but that remain firmly grounded within the lines of one's agenda. To anticipate that lack of time is a wonderful reminded for what little time I have now, and what smaller amounts of time I will have in the future to devote to cloudweaving and wordslaying.

14. Theatre theatre theatre theatre theatre. How many times have I walked away from you, have I thrown you out of doors and bade you never to come back, only to find myself backstage again and thinking, "I was made to do this"? Yours and mine is an enduring love that will go beyond any kind of separation. It is the love of the morning after--the love that started as a vague attraction, that I didn't realise I had until I saw your hair upon the pillow and your eyes in the daylight.

15. Philosophy. I have so missed being beaten and bloodied by your heavy hands. You too, philosophy, are one I became infatuated with before I ever loved. You too, will remain.

Rules Concerning le Château du Couch

Founded by Bernard Soubry in the late hours of September 12, 2009, le Château du Couch is a splendor of couch architecture, combining both the laziboyian and traditional styles. It is both a haven and a stepping-ground, both a place of beauty and a temple of efficiency.

Though first appearing bare and stoic as a Buddhist temple, the entrance chamber eventually amazes by its use of semi-translucid bed covers; blue and green tartans slowly illuminate the interior as the sun rises each morning. Further in, plush cushions give inhabitants a feeling of matrical comfort while the rigid structure of the couch seat brings an open, airy feel. Inside, one can only feel safe; outside, one can only stare in awe.

RULES CONCERNING LE CHÂTEAU DU COUCH

1. There shall be no shoes, for shoes harsh the mellow.
2. There shall be no other couch forts before this one.
3. Waffles are not to be consumed in the couch area.
4. Penguins are not to be fed in the couch area.
5. Death to all couch-haters.

Second Thoughts

We do only what we can--that is, when we aren't doing what we must.

I'm in no rush, I'm in no rush (Oh I, Oh I, Oh I)

Scathing is all that one can truly be in the turnarounds, the leaps of faith that bring only disappointment; and it is only with revolution that one finds salvation from stagnancy. For even when all is bleak and there is nothing but wall ahead, one can always hope that the flaming arrow will return and drive its archer back to what once was there.

Things I am Thankful For, Numbers 9 Through 11

9. Warm fingers. You may not realize it now, tiny digits of mine, but your survival is at risk! I don't have any gloves down here and the coming frosts will bring your slowing. So I celebrate you well, instruments of my instrument, vessels of my vessels. You are too beautiful, too articulate, too useful to cower under gloves and cloth, but perhaps prudence would be useful. New Brunswick is a harsh land.

10. Plans to excercise. Somehow, they always make one feel better--even moreso than actual exercising, it would seem. Potentiality is the true attainment of form; if the latter is thrust into our hands, it blackens and breaks as soon as we touch it.

11. Physical contact with other human beings. I had forgotten how good a hug felt. We all forget it at one point.

Scission

Oh, it was nice out there, to be sure; and yet it came nowhere close to the relief of removal, to the quiet, pure pain of separation that came from the long walk back up the stairs, the smile, the collapse and the realisation that the reach for the external always comes with such bloody burdens.

Serious

Born of star-crossed parents, bred in desert lands, he is alone. Not the last of his kind; the first, looking for truth in the unforgiving world. Conflict made incarnate.

He is the spirit of capture and authority; he is the wild that disturbs every heart with the thrill of adventure.

He is the unicorn cowboy.

Vacuums

The guilt I feel at having nothing to say is constantly swallowed by my need to say something--anything, no matter the quality, so long as the vaccums are filled and that nature is content.

Perhaps we should extend those vacuums, those periods, those ellipses, if only to be able to understand the precipice before which we stand. Leave the window open for the new air to rush in.

Things I Am Thankful For, Numbers 1 Through 8

Things I am thankful for:

1. Roommates that turn out to be more wonderful than you can imagine, right down to the fencing bit.

2. Guides, whether advertised or otherwise, who merely show you the path rather than attempt to walk it for you; and those guides who try to do it for you anyways, for their spirit and (misguided) generosity.

3. Good food at the end of a long journey. Somehow it always turns into great food.

4. Those who, when left behind, somehow still believe that you are doing something right.

5. Dear friends who remain when all else is changed.

6. Buckets. The kind that hold clothes, then become a part of your furniture, because yours isn't there yet.

7. Late nights that turn into early mornings that turn into late nights. Some lives are meant to be lived with days bursting with activity and joy.

8. Friends that still hang within the potentiality of time. Some people may simply be doorways; others are glorious rooms.

If there is to be sadness, then I do not understand.

True departures are those that come in the night, with no explanation or excuse; they are those that tear it from you in one great sweep of the hand. True departures are those that leave you open and raw and bleeding from some unseen force.

This, on the other hand--this is calculated, this is announced, this is the thread slowly unravelled from your breast and held aloft over oceans and tempests.

Perhaps, then, such a departure is not a true parting at all?

And perhaps that's why I feel the pain, too.

Resilience

I refuse! I categorically reject this proposal of silence, these quiet forces that bend the marrow in my bones and stoop my shoulders before the darkness. I am no doll, I am no shell, I am no dilapidated slave before any of you. Let me be an instrument, if nothing else; but I will not be driftwood in the waters of the Universe. I will make waves, and if I feel no echo in the humid, dark places of the soul, I will swim until I find shore or until I dissolve in this ocean of existence.

Thus is my resistance. Better to fill our mouths with stinging seawater than be pushed by the riptide without fight.

Defeat

We, the few who set out determined to change the universe--

Is it not appropriate that it is the universe which has changed us?

Dismissing the hypothesis that suicides go to hell... (or: Thus I, To Life)

“Thank you for calling God,” a vaguely female voice sounded. “All
our seraphic operators are currently unavailable--”

“In heaven?” The suicide tightened the noose, checking the knot as
he cradled the phone with his chin.

“—please hold until we can take your call.”

Gounod's Ave Maria began playing to his disbelieving ears.

“I'm sorry, but do you understand?” He spoke almost calmly into the
receiver. “I am quite literally on a stool, noose around my neck--”

Click.

“Your call is important to us. Please hold until--”

“--ready to kill myself, needing only one word from our Risen Lord
to convince me not--”

“--for your further satisfaction as well as training purposes, your
call may be recorded--”

“I'll do it! I swear!”

“Ave Maria, gratia plena--”

That was it.

“You brought it on yourself!” he cried into the phone, reaching for
the rope that would trigger the pulley mechanism he'd rigged to trip
the stool. “You never listened—and now I'll pull this—and then I'll
make my complaint right to your ear, because I'll be right there
in--”

He paused.

Slowly, he put down the phone, which had found its way into the Mass
in B Minor.

He loosened the knot and gingerly stepped down from the stool.

Thought

Sometimes the greatest grace is knowing there may be no turning back.

Shadow Gift for Sully

In these dry and arid soils
few stand as you stand.

The rest of us
hold up our great, thatched instruments
and pray for coming song

(though no matter how subtle
or sun-scorched
we seem to
resolutely find sand
thicker than blood).

Yet you,
you bend to the driest ground
not to plant harps
or catch some celestial wind;
you feel the accurate,
accurate burning
and stoop to teach us
how to kiss the dust
and return,
lips shining with song.

Hyarg.

My ear hurts right now.

Ouch, ouch, ouch.

How wonderful, though--once you begin thinking about it--that despite the fact that I'm currently attempting to push together some willing words in order to make my presence known in the (slightly) immaterial spheres here, my only current thought's source is located in my left inner ear canal, where an obnoxious piece of wax has been pressing against my eardrum with an determination that makes me recall those pictures of people pressed against the Berlin Wall. How wonderful that, no matter how far the mind goes, the body is always calling it back.

Oh, spirits of Cartesian dualism, begone! I reject the idea that mind and body will be one day removed, I reject your initial hatred for the vessels, the instruments of this life! Didn't old René himself find the soul deep down in some niche of our cranium? If I am to live in this crass shell, I will not make my stay without it leaving an impression on me, and vice-versa. Let there be pain, let there be ecstasy, let there(oh, please, let there) be chocolate. My body is a cage and I am a willing prisoner, if only to be able to touch every inch of its golden entrapment. Not hedonism, no; symbiosis. Homeostasis between controller and controlled.

Okay, that really hurts. Peroxide now.

Some cages were meant to be broken.