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?