dark room, dark floor —
fell through a trapdoor,
falling, falling
screaming, & calling
no one near to hear
&
no floor to fall to,
but wall-to-wall with fear
’cause of cyphers, who
— oh so rudely jeer
while singing,
“The end is near,
but your end is nearer,
so hold the past dear,
but the present dearer —
because that’s all…”
Those old, stone boulders —
rough, cold, and lonely.
Topped with temples older
than the one and only —
that cave carved in a hill,
chiseled in ancient rock
by feat of iron will —
precise as key-in-lock.
How long will it last
for pilgrims to walk
into the distant past,
’til it erodes like chalk?
Here’s a linked list of the thirty poems I did this month (each in a different style) for National Poetry Month (and the various other descriptors it’s become known by: e.g. #NaPoWriMo and #GloPoWriMo )
1.) Limerick: Viral Limerick
2.) Sonnet: A Sonnet in Contradictions
3.) Haiku: Solitude Haiku
4.) Ghazal: Away
5.) Acrostic: BANGALORE
6.) Villanelle: Escaping the Frame
7.) Clerihew: A Few Clerihew
8.) Ode: Ode to my Immune System
9.) Ruba’i: Cloud Ruba’iyat
10.) Tanka: Rainy Day Tanka
11.) Free Verse: Train of Sleep
12.) Rondeau: I’ve Seen Sunsets
13.) Senryu: A Few Senryu
14.) Pantoum: Bee Flow
15.) Elegy: Spanish Flu Elegy
16.) Narrative: The Philosopher
17.) Doggerel: All Hail, Warhol!
18.) Prose Poem: Perpetual City
19.) Idyll: Sense of the Meadow
20.) Sestina: Fear in Motion
21.) Lai: Rubber Ducky
22.) Ottava Rima: The Unblemished & the Indelible
23.) Aubade: Booty Call Aubade
24.) Confessional: Fear & the Snowflake
25.) Triolet: The Cult of Leandra
26.) Lyric: Sound
27.) Eclogue: After the Rains
28.) Symbolist: Pressure
29.) Dickinsonian: (1)
30.) Ballad: Orpheus Twisted
He played his way to the underworld,
capturing every ear.
Even the gods couldn’t move to fight,
but stood stock still to hear.
The musician made his merry way
to the throne of the gods.
And boldly made a petition
that defied rules and odds.
Ye, gods! There’s been a huge mistake.
My wife, she died too soon.
If you’ll let us go on our way
I’ll play THE most dulcet tune.
The gods conferred and reached a verdict:
“If our terms are heeded
and your tune is dreamy enough,
she Will be conceded.”
Tuning his lyre, the artist asked,
“May I, Now, hear the terms?”
“Lead her above — without a peek,
or t’s back to food for worms.”
The dulcet tune was as he claimed,
and Two had leave to go.
From Styx out to the burning sun,
he itched, her place, to know.
When almost out, he heard a thud
and his name feebly called.
He stayed true to the gods’ strict terms,
as her blood puddle sprawled.
As she was retaking bodily form,
she’d tripped upon a rock.
Maybe direct pressure on the wound
and she’d not bled into Shock.
So if god or man makes you a deal
contingent on ignorance,
you might think twice before taking
up residence inside that fence.
[Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman were poetic revolutionaries whose new approaches to the art were highly influential in the creation of a distinctive American tradition of poetry. It’s often said that all Dickinson’s poems are written in common meter (alternating lines of four and three feet) and can thus be sung to “Yellow Rose of Texas” or “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” While that’s not perfectly accurate, it is true that a substantial portion of her work fits that mold. In terms of form, the other thing Dickinson is famed for is the use of dashes, though there is no consensus agreement about a well-defined rationale for their use.
Moving from form to content, Dickinson’s style offers a singular approach to metaphor. Also, while she usually deals in weighty topics such as death and loneliness, her verse often has a whimsical / witty tone. (e.g. “Because I could not stop for Death — He kindly stopped for me –” (479)) Her poems normally feature a first person and frame that person as — first and foremost — an observer (i.e. a seer and a hearer.)
Also, I’ve not put a title to this poem because Dickinson didn’t title her poems. They are normally ordered by first line, a number, or both. This isn’t a form of laziness, but seems to reflect Dickinson’s preference for propelling the reader into the heart of the matter without prelude.]
A Poem lands a heavy blow
against these muted walls.
To those who think this Cell, my cell —
I’m never here — at all.
For I’m a wave on churning Seas —
a thousand miles away.
‘Twas written so — long days ago,
no page has bid me stay.
The overseeing angels-of-the-angry-kind strain, but can’t generate sufficient force of eye. So, they weep in their failure.
Chained to a pillar on the temple mount, the floggings amount to little more than bloodlettings. The thin fluid rolls away, replaced by thicker and more hardy concoction.
Even the ravenous robed one has no pull. He’s too far from the children and too familiar to the elders.
So the scene replays. It’s a dream scene that will roll over into real life, becoming more vivid and closer to true — no longer a dim facsimile.
One’s only hope is that one’s less evil twin isn’t evil enough.
[Eclogues are sometimes called bucolics and are in the same vein as the idyll, which I covered on Day 19. They are short poems, set in a rural locale, and are often (but not always) in the form of a dialogue between shepherds or other country folk. There is no set form, though they are normally in metered verse because that was the mode in the days in which this genre was popular.]
Having stormed the night before, all felt clean.
And the grass swelled, deepening in its green.
And the shepherds’ cuffs were damp to dripping,
while lazing sheep partook of puddle sipping.
Two shepherds sat on rocks watching their flocks,
as overhead circled two gliding hawks.
A said to P, “Think new storms are coming?”
P replied, “I hear that distant rumbling.”
“But should we drive our flocks back home?”
“I think I’ll let mine graze and roam.”
“But last night’s winds almost took my roof!”
“They’re wearing wool; they’re waterproof.”
“But we’ll be soaked in this cotton!”
“Wet, yes. But I’ll not go rotten.”
“It could get a lot more frightening,
our sheep could get hit by lightening!
Then what will you say to your pa and mum?”
“I’ll say, ‘Hope you like your mutton well-done.'”
Relentless sound, relentlessly pounds —
throbbing throughout the town.
They crank the volume up so loud;
I turn it right back down.
But songs sung in quiet, they grind
on the sour side of mind.
Some lump of cells tries hard to find
the sound below the line.
And when the sound yields to silence,
my brain asks where it went,
and how I sit astride the fence
about rowdy or silent?
[A triolet is a poetic form of eight lines (or using 8-line stanzas) in which a rhyme scheme of ABaAabAB is employed — where the capital letters involve lines that are repeated verbatim and the lower case lines are new. So, though the stanza is eight lines, there are only five unique lines and just two rhymes per stanza.
Leandra was the name of a much courted beauty whose story features in the penultimate chapter of the first volume of Don Quixote. After being duped into an elopement that was — in fact — a robbery, she was sent away to a convent. Many of the men who pined after her ended up as shepherds and goatherds, spending their days alternately cursing and defending the gorgeous Leandra.]
Bemoaning true beauty’s raw loss.
Swains retreat to the goatherd life,
as happens when the loins are boss.
They decry true beauty’s raw loss,
as their idle stones gather moss,
they mope of the lost scenic wife.
Bemoaning true beauty’s sad loss.
Swains retreat to the goatherd life.
Reading about Audie Murphy vaccinated me with perspective.
Maybe you heard of him as a star of silver screen cowboy cinema.
He also received the Medal of Honor for single-handedly taking on a unit of Nazis from atop a burning tank after sending his men to the concealment of a forest.
But he was also known for stage fright and intense shyness. Once, asked to give a speech, he said he’d rather storm a Nazi machinegun position, and he should know.
That seems like a strange mix of fearlessness and fearfulness, but isn’t everyone’s?
I’m less afraid of giving a speech than I am of having to mingle with strangers at a cocktail party.
I’m less afraid of being punched in the face than I am of misspeaking. (Sadly, I have enough experience with both to say as much.)
I’m less afraid of dying than I am of being so incapacitated that I don’t have the option to wheel, crawl, or hobble my failing body off a cliff.
I’ve been found fearless by people mortified by hand-standing or petting a strange dog.
I’ve been considered cowardly by masters of cocktail party mingling.
And they are both correct.
And they are both so wrong.
