I rise up in slate – what care I of time?

Shades reflective of my soul – my heart wonders in hues felt,

Charcoal through silver – yellows through purples.

Dawn or dusk does not matter – the seconds, minutes, the hours

In the colors of mourning – are no means to measure joy.

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At dVerse, Frank Tassone, our pubtender for today’s Meeting the Bar, challenges us to delve into aesthetics of Imagism, where less verbiage is employed to produce more imagery. We’re also encouraged to use Japanese or Sappho Greek lyric to accomplish such.

I chose an ancient form of Japanese poetry called Tanka and used it as a Super Tanka.

Tanka are 31-syllable poems. In Japan, it is usually written as a straight line of characters, but in English and other Western languages, it is usually divided into five lines, with a syllable count of 5-7-5-7-7.

The key to the Super Tanka form is that it is two Tanka side-by-side. Each can be read independently, yet must also work together as a whole, in effect creating three poems in one.

dVerse Poets Pub – Meeting the Bar: Imagism Revisited