Category Archives: Meeting the Bar

How Do I Remember You Today?

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How do I remember you today?

Faded ribbons holding memories
Twirling the colors between my fingers

Indigo as the night you first touched me just so

Scarlet as the blood pulsing through my veins
When I went from being your woman to being your wife
Perhaps the white as the fresh made snowball in sunlight
That I waited until I was inside the house to throw

Faded ribbons holding memories

Maybe the orange of the summer tiger lilies
You didn’t think could I grow in our yard
Oh, the lush green for the fresh-cut lawn
I had to teach you how to mow

Twirling the colors between my fingers

Perhaps the rich deep brown of steak
Well done as you loved, but I abhorred
Then there’s the aqua as crystal clear
As the waters of our Caribbean cruises

Or the slate of the morn I became your widow

Twirling the colors between my fingers
Faded ribbons holding memories

How do I remember you today?

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dVerse Poets Pub graphic

dVerse Poets Pub : Meeting The Bar: Memento

This week Grace has us Meeting the Bar via mementos. Either as the poetry form itself or in a free style poetry with a theme of memento, using symbolism as a poetic device.

There

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There in the shadows of the night
There within the glow of city lights
There are many things that can affright
There are just as many that excite

There, a riot is about to ignite
There in the shadows of the night
There, helicopters with floodlights
There, to televise the blight

There, someone chooses wrong over right
There, someone catches the wrong person’s sight
There in the shadows of the night
There, pray battles prey come stroke of midnight

There, under a sky dark and finite
There, where the moon is the only light
There, secret lovers meet to unite
There in the shadows of the night

dVerse Poets Pub graphic

dVerse Poets Pub Tenth Anniversary |
Meet the bar with Chant poetry

Tonight as we continue to celebrate the Tenth Anniversary here at dVerse Poets Pub, Björn prompts us to use our voices in a chant.

Here in a mix of a-starting with the same word as opening rhyme and b- closing each line in a tight monorhyme, I also revisit the Quartern form for an assist.


No Means To Measure

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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

dVerse Poets Pub - OpenLinkNight Mic

At Act I

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Yes, all of the world is a stage my friends
At least it is told what the people say
From when we begin until our time ends
Our too brief ride held in Sol’s sweet sway
And it matters not what part we will play
For as prince or pawn is roll of the die
At Act I, Scene I: curtains rise: we all cry

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Tonight at dVerse Frank challenges us to “is to write a poem with seven lines.” For those who want to go a further we are challenged to make it like a Chaucerian stanza/Rime Royal – is a seven-line poem in iambic pentameter with a rhyme scheme of ABABBCC.

dVerse Poets Pub: Meeting The Bar

dVerse Poets Pub graphic

What It’s Not

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It’s not the breadth of his shoulders
Or the warmness of his gut
It’s not the stride of his long legs,
That oh so proud strut

It’s not the coin of his bank
Saved in bunches
To cope with any fallout
From rainy-day punches

Nor is it being held in his strong arms,
A niche for me made so dear
It is his deep rumble of sweet nothings
Whispering everything in my ear

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Tonight at dVerse, Björn challenges us to Listen to Lists. Be creative, use any type of list and then write a poem from that list. Let it grow, and be inspired by rhymes and metaphors.

My list is also something of a Not Poem.

dVerse ~ Poets Pub: Meet the Bar & Listen to Lists

dVerse Poets Pub - OpenLinkNight Mic

Better Plans

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I did not want that I should fall in love
For it seemed Fate had better plans for me
It was a bother not mine to speak of
I did not think I could fall in a love
Hard as the bedrock yet soft as a glove
That such love could be returned you see
But now I know I have fallen in love
For it seemed Fate had better plans for me

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Today on dVerse Poet’s Pub Frank challenges to write a triolet or a poem that closely resembles a triolet.

So, what is a triolet? A triolet’s characteristics are the following.

  1. The poem has 8 lines.
  2. The rhyme scheme is abaaabab.
  3. The meter is iambic tetrameter.
  4. The first, fourth and seventh lines repeat.
  5. The second and eighth lines repeat.



It Was A Pleasure

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I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane

Bestrewn with lines of levity, held down in weighty prose
Each character a delight, each jot and tittle filled with those

Such words that enticed and sorely endeared
Oh, how my heart flew! Then its wings sheared

The shock as your cursive on vellum to see
Were just as well writ to another she

Who knew your words could so deceive,
When writ you loved me and I believed?

I read those words anew with different eyes
Wallowed in the depth of those well crafted lies

The parchments of paragraphs penned are gathered
Those once sweet sentences now kerosene slathered

And your fabrications float on incendiary puffs
That thus punctuate how my love of you is snuffed

With the last of when for you I yearned
It was a pleasure to burn

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Tonight at the pub Gospel Isosceles asks us to “bridge the gap” by quoting the opening lines from two different books, and then construct a poem filling in the space between. I used the following opening lines:

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure in the windowpane;
—Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (1962)

It was a pleasure to burn.
—Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

dVerse ~Poets Pub
dVerse ~ Poets Pub |
Meeting The Bar — Bridging the Gap

To Disappear Completely

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A voice gone
In the nebulous
Echoing
Thoughts faded
To disappear completely
Never felt again

I am lost
Much like the fog in
Morning sun
Just like dew
To disappear completely
In the deep vastness

In the words
Once heard in volume
Now slowly
Gone silent
To disappear completely
And no one noticed

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dVerse Poets Pub | MTB: Phantom Form — Shadorma

A Shadorma is a phantom form enshrouded in shadows and mystery. It is a syllabic poem consisting of six-line stanzas. The pattern is 3-5-3-3-7-5, and you may write one stanza, twenty, or anywhere in between.

In honor of its nebulous origins, pub tender Gospel Isosceles suggests the content explore the fog, the paranormal, the unexplained phenomena of life and death. Ultimately though, let the Shadorma lead in what one shall write…and reveal.

For Chester

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You took your life, this summer day
Swept it away
And so we sigh
And so we cry

You took your life, our hearts makes due
But they’re not you
Gritty taunting
Beauty haunting

You took your life, left us no choice
Only your voice
Just an echo
We can’t let go

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Today at dVerse Frank Hubeny asks us to take a minute and write a poem using the Minute Poem form:

A Minute Poem has exactly 60 syllables which we assume match the 60 seconds in a minute. The form also requires three stanzas of 20 syllables each. Each stanza has four lines. The first line has 8 syllables and the next three lines have 4 syllables each. If that is not enough constraints, the poem is expected to have end rhymes for the three stanzas that go aabb ccdd eeff.

I am still stunned by the suicide of Linkin Park Lead singer Chester Bennington, earlier today.

In a post from April I wrote about my love for Linkin Park and the very first time I heard them:

Chester Bennington, lead vocalist for Linkin Park, was unforgiving as he growled his way into my id, fucking trashed it like a drugged out rocker’s hotel room and by God I wanted more! When the video ended I immediately turned off the television hyperventilating, not knowing what the fuck hit me, but I remember I finally fell asleep and felt so much better upon waking.

A minute poem is about all I can do right now, so perfect.

dVerse Poets Pub – Meeting the Bar:The Minute Poem

 

Nobody Knew

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Nobody knew
Those curtains so dark
Hid dirty deeds so stark
The silence is broken

Nobody knew
That which made me strong
Was learned from all your wrong
For no words are spoken

Nobody knew
The sins in midnights past
Have come to roost at last
The silence is broken

Nobody knew
The depth of the danger
Was from kin not stranger
For no words are spoken

Nobody knew
The truths that were shun
Until the cock of the gun
The silence is broken

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At dVerse Victoria prompts us to say it again with the use of repetition.

dVerse ~ Poet Pub | Meeting the Bar – I’ll Say It Again (and Again and Again)

Real Toads: The Tuesday Platform