Tag Archives: Poetry

The Castle Keep

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My steed rides roughly through the loam
We’ve traveled very wide and far
Battle weary but still on par
For all the road I’ve yet to roam
The longest road the first step home

The portion to right unjust wrong
The cost to our men’s lives was steep
The pride we sow we humbly reap
The battle fought was hard and long
Tales that become folklore and song

Glad it’s all done should truth be told
I contemplate my latest scar
Hopeful my queen forgives the mar
Small price to pay her gentle scold
To see the face I long to hold

A winter’s storm slows our advance
All far travels have their own cost
As we lose more men to the frost
My men look to me for guidance
I cannot waver in my stance

Though my own mood be very drear
It’s I alone who holds their hope
It’s by my lead I know they cope
The last goal twixt what we hold dear
My men let loose a hearty cheer

I may yet enter in a tome
The sight of the valley’s green sweep
And just ahead the Castle Keep
The wind becomes our wild mane’s comb
The shortest road the last step home

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dVerse Poets Pub | Poetics: Exploring the Narrative Voice

Ingrid tends the bar at dVerse Poets and challenges us to write a poem in the voice of a fictional character. It can be any character. One can introduce the character in one’s own voice, but the main body of the poem must be in the voice of the character. It can be a dramatic monologue, or create a spirit voice through whom the poem speaks. The challenge is to experiment with fictional storytelling in the poem.

I’ve gone all medieval king returning home at the end of a battle.

Self

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I remember a time when
Someone like I
Would never consider
Myself being worth anything, let alone everything
Funny how life can change a thing like that
As my self-worth, my self-care and love of self grows

National Poetry Month for 2021 Day 30

First time ever completing thirty whole days of original poetry – YAY!🎊

I end National Poetry Month, keeping it short and simple, with my first Golden Shovel poem using the opening line of Sonnet 15 by William Shakespeare

The Golden Shovel form was created by Terrance Hayes in tribute to Gwendolyn Brooks. The rules are simple:

  • Take a line (or lines) from a poem you admire.
  • Use each word in the line (or lines) as the end word for each line in your poem.
  • If you take a single line with six words, your poem would be six lines long. If you take two lines and the first line has 19 words, and the next has 13 words your poem would be 32 lines long in total and so on…
  • Keep the end words in order of the original poem.
  • The new poem does not have to be about the same subject as the poem that offers the end words.
  • Give credit to the poet who originally wrote the line (or lines).

She Tells Him

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Standing there by the old fence
She sure is a pretty sight
He forgot just how her eyes do shine
Under the bright sun light
He ain’t seen her in over month
Truth be told not since that night
And he knows the call bringing him here
Can’t be for something right

She tells him the baby is yours
And he knows she ain’t lying
Inside her a life slowly grows
But inside him he’s slowly dying
Being a dad at seventeen
Wasn’t part of his plan
A baby makes him a father
But it don’t make him a man

She leans against the old fence
Not enjoying the cooling breeze
The silence between them is deafening
It’s not meant for times like these
She remembers how he held her close that night
How he made her weak in the knees
Not this distance she feels now standing next to him
Like she’s got some kind of disease

She tells him the baby is yours
And he knows she ain’t lying
She should be happy about this life that grows
But she’s on the verge of crying
Being a mom at sixteen
Wasn’t part of her plan
A baby makes her a mother
But it don’t make her a woman

He’s thinking how two together
Can sometimes add another one
She’s thinking she can’t raise herself
Let alone a daughter or a son
Both want to stand their own ground
Both of them want to run
And neither wants to dare to think
What the other thinks should be done

If he offers his hand would she be his wife
And somehow together maybe make a life
Or let it be something that they just let go
The distant dreams only the two of them will know
She tells him the baby is yours
And he knows she ain’t lying
No matter what they decide
Its knot that’s never untying

Having a child in their teens
Wasn’t part of their plan
A baby makes them parents
But she’s a long way from a woman,
And he’s a long way from a man

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dVerse Poets Pub | Open Link Night

dVerse Poets Pub | Open Link Night #291

Today Mish tends the bar for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets where there are no prompts. Post the poem you want.

National Poetry Month Day 29 in a narrative mood.

Could Not Conceive Such

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Tears flow with delight
Forgiven are the pains of labor
From the tender life so sweet
Of the new born in her arms
A baby she never thought
One like her would ever greet

~ Because they could not conceive such ~

A time in which the sunlight
He used to once savor
Would ever be forgotten
Living for centuries with such qualms
A creature of the dark sought
The warm rays of dawn now verboten

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dVerse Poets Pub | Poetics: Build a Bridge

dVerse Poets Pub | Poetics: Build a Bridge

Tonight at dVerse Merrill asks us to build a bridge of sorts with the Puente form or to write a poem about bridges.

The Puente

In a Puente (Spanish for bridge), the first and third stanzas must have the same number of lines, but there is no set number of lines, as long as the two stanzas match. They can be rhymed or unrhymed. The bridge line is one single line connecting the first and third stanzas. The last line of the first stanza and the bridge line are a couplet, and the bridge line and the first line of the third stanza are a couplet. The bridge line then often connects stanzas written from different points of view or about different ideas.
It sounds more complicated than it is, but it really is not. Two stanzas with a middle line that connects them.

I bridge rhyming Puente of a woman celebrating the birth of her newborn with a vampire longing for the dawn.

National Poetry Month for 2021 Day 28

Some Shade of Blue

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I would need some time, to give it its due,
It’s a daunting thing you ask of me.
The seas are more than just some shade of blue

Oh, how would I render such a vibrant hue,
When seas reach the shore at dawn? At three?
I’d need some time, to give it its due.

In colors cleaved only with God’s imbue, 
This palette of mine must try to decree.
The seas are more than just some shade of blue.

There are whitecapped curls of waves to construe 
As they crash against the rocks prettily.
I’d need some time, to give it its due.

Certainly more time than you’d think it’s true. 
Shades vaster than the horizons to see.
Yes, I’d need some time, to give it it’s due.
The seas are more than just some shade of blue.

National Poetry Month for 2021 Day 27

And today’s poetic form is a Villanelle.

The Villanelle is a poetic form composed of nineteen lines. These are arranged as five tercets (three-line stanzas) followed by a quatrain (four-line stanza).

There is no established meter to the villanelle – modern villanelles tend to pentameter, while early villanelles used trimeter or tetrameter.

The most striking thing about a villanelle is that it has two refrains (“A1” and “A2”) and two repeating rhymes (“a” and “b”). The first and third line of the opening tercet are repeated alternately as the refrains, until the last stanza, which includes both refrains.

With this, the pattern of the villanelle can be illustrated as as

A1bA2
abA1
abA2
abA1
abA2
abA1A2

where “a” and “b” are the two rhymes, and the upper case letters (“A1” and “A2”) indicate the refrains.

Unmarked

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The spark that once set my soul alight
with fire and fight
I thought died in the embers of the long ago
killed slow
But a moment of the then returns to the now
and how
The desire for apathy crawls upon my skin
and sinks within
But I turn in tune, a marionette
who can’t forget
When words of honor marked needs
negated by dishonorable deeds
I am conjured by promises left unspoken
and now broken
In the end whose price is the one direly paid
for thoughts mislaid?
For once the Fates in their own twisted sense divine
it shall not be mine
And eventually, the pain subsides and the soul heals
from wounds surreal
Finally shelved to deal only with today’s realities
I welcome the banalities

National Poetry Month for 2021 Day 26

When There Is No One There To See

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I’m imagining the you, the you you choose to be
when there is no one there to see

When the company is gone and you close the door,
are you the same person you were the moment before?

If you didn’t know company was coming by,
would left-over take-out be the only food supply?

Who are you? The you you choose to be,
when there is no one there to see.

If I open a closet, will dirty clothes fall from on high,
because when you said you last did laundry was a white lie?

Do you rage at a world you want to throttle
or silently drown your fears at the bottom of a bottle?

Tell me about the you, the you you choose to be
when there is no one there to see.

Do you blast your music because the beats make you glad?
Or simply to drown out the loneliness making you sad?

Do you put your dirty feet on the coffee table,
and run around nude just ’cause you’re able?

I want to know the you, the you you choose to be,
when there is no one there to see?

National Poetry Month for 2021 Day 25 pondering who you are when no one is looking…

His Aura

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A young heart, a soul of ancient Torah
Strength to the power that is his aura

The slings and arrows of life untamed
Just slide from the plating of his aura

When my soul’s shards were jumbled about
Calm was found in the peace of his aura

Emotions tailored skin with cutlery
Vanish in the healing of his aura

He is candlelight in the deepest dark
It is the harmony of his aura

Those who turned the page to my new peace
Know the benevolence of his aura

And when asked what factor gives him his peace
States it’s a Raivenne, that is his aura

National Poetry Month for 2021 Day 24 I’m trying a Ghazal

A Ghazal is a collection of two-line poems or couplets which follow six rules.

First – Each verse or couplet should be readable as an independent poem, which do not have to rely on the other verses, though the full ghazal has a theme – traditionally romantic or spiritual love and longing.

Second – Each line of the couplets must have the same meter. All the lines in one ghazal must have the same meter.

Third – All of the couplet verses must end with the same refrain, which could be a word or a phrase.

Fourth – The words before the refrain phrase must rhyme.

Fifth – The beginning couplet must repeat the refrain word or phrase in both lines.

Sixth – The final couplet must reference the poet’s name, or alias and sometimes a derivation of the meaning of the poet’s name. This was a traditional way for the poet to sign, or to affix his or her mark upon the work

Somehow

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Somehow the thought of you . . .

Rushed in with a swiftness that knocked me to my knees,
Praying for a release quick in coming

Somehow the look from you . . .

Is a spark that quickly quietly – ignites,
A hot match tossed onto dry underbrush

Somehow the heart of you . . .

Peeked out one sunset,
Between the bites of peach cobbler and sips of mimosa

It lingered just long enough,

To cause my soul to sigh

National Poetry Month for 2021 Day 24 has me reminiscing the first spark.

In Search of Lucidity

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I wake each morn and reach for you
Habit your death cannot control
The days they past as days will do
But it’s still night within my soul

It sears to realize how much
Our spirits were so intertwined
And now bereft of half of such
I’ve no clue what’s been redefined

Waiting to see on the morrow
Will El Sol keep my company
Needing out of this deep sorrow
That holds tight the darkness in me

In solitary soliloquy
I look for lucidity

National Poetry Month for 2021 Day 23 finds me trying my hand at a Pushkin Sonnet

The Pushkin Sonnet has fourteen lines, with no set meter. The rhyme scheme is divided into one of the two following stanza formats:

abab ccdd effe gg or abab ccdd eff egg