SheFallsSoftly

I once knew a boy from Moore
Who was fascinated by my back door
I’d say, “Knock up front!”
He’d always pull a stunt
Acting stupid he’d say, “Oops, wrong door!”

Iambic pentameter, ababcdecde rhyme scheme x 3 verses. boo.

In my mind I braid your hair, fingers part
Your waves like seas, and I’ve become Noah.
This is, of course, how the delusions start,
Exploring your parts, a tender Jonah
I try to find my way in, never out
All of my fingers weaving your soft hair
middle and forefinger robotically working
And I savor your full waves in my draught
Of real connection, with you unaware,
A moment stolen while you weren’t looking.

I tack each of your letters upon the wall,
And I read and re-read your easy hand.
Your honest words hit me soft like rainfall
On the ocean of the water-wasteland
Of my mind. You come quick into me, but
As we’re consumed into each other I
Still beg that we might be closer, all wet
All skin on skin, so close, but we are not
The same, and lonely in a sea of you, I cry.
We hardly even know each other yet.

So this is all that I have to offer,
A frightened love, affection, and nightmares,
What a pathetic ode to a lover
Who, so quiet in her devotion, bears
The ceaseless strain of my (self) interest
And, as if emerging from the sea, she,
Bare, offers me her everything. Faults, and
Beauty all the same, ashamed but undressed
Why would she give all of her grace to me?
Thankful but damaged, I won’t understand.

J is for….Johnn! This poem is sort of like an etheree, in that the way you write it is all about syllables.
Stanza 1- Title, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2
Stanza 2- Title 4, 6, 8, 6, 4
Stanza 3- Title 2,3,4,3,2

Sweet
He says
His tone oozes
Cinnamon
He calls me
Sweet

Sweet
He’ll whisper, sounds
Like Dulce de leche
Kisses always sugar-coated
Always dripping chocolate
He calls me sweet.

Sweet
Candy
Cavity
He pulls away
Stomach ache
Too sweet.

I is for….Interlocking Rubaiyat. Rhyme scheme is aaba, bbcb, ccac.

I do not know how to live in this skin.
There is flesh, with bone, muscle, blood within
All beating with the same dull pulsation
But my identity feels plastic, my words full of tin.

I transfer through moments solely by compulsion
Or maybe the instants are all in convulsion
And first infant, then grown, I am being birthed into life
I am caught in time’s ridiculous propulsion

If I could look ahead and see midlife
See myself as some man’s wife
If I could look back, retrace it all again
I might know myself before the afterlife.

there is silence here,
it lurks beneath the surface
and grows like fungus.

A glose starts with a texte and comments on it through expanded discussion. In other words, it takes the texte, which may be a stanza of any number of lines and then creates a stanza for each of those lines.

“A last attempt: the language is a dialect called metaphor.
These images go unglossed: hair, glacier, flashlight.
When I think of a landscape I am thinking of a time.
When I talk of taking a trip I mean forever.
I could say: those mountains have a meaning
but further than that I could not say.”
-A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, Adrienne Rich

A last attempt: the language is a dialect called metaphor.
We’ve attempted to meet in our own native tongues,
And a few we speak conversationally.
Already, we have nothing in common.
We’ve found a rather unfamiliar patois
In which we attempt to create meaning.
Analogy makes clarity illusory.

These images go unglossed: hair, glacier, flashlight.
Occassionally, you cannot escape reality.
Some meanings cannot mount the language barrier,
Falling off the wall like wounded soldiers,
I on east, you on west, attempt to dismantle
Cross, or get below the apartheid of understanding.
I go over, you go under, we find ourselves on opposite sides, still lonely.

“When I think of a landscape I am thinking of a time,”
I attempt to explain. “Like ancient egypt? Pyramids?” You ask,
Never getting it. The literal is like a drug
To which you are, of course, addicted. You crave simplicity,
I offer you a symbol (subtle methodone).
“Perhaps behind this door we’ve tried, there is nothing.”

When I talk of taking a trip I mean forever.
I could say this in my own tongue, but it would be meaningless.
I could say this in our shared tongue.
It would be meaningless.

I could say: these mountains have a meaning.
You would say: excuse me?
I would try to explain myself,

But further than that I could not say.
I admit, “I do not have the language.”
I do not say that you don’t either.

Because I’m lazy, this will be free verse.

I do not know
Where the wind blows
And so I follow in the wake
Of cars and planes
Which lead me back and forth
But always astray.
I hang my heart above me like
A wan and sallow moon,
But when I cry aloud,
That is not who I speak to.
I feed each and each lies
About who I want them to see,
And each and each believes.
All believe but me…
“Who am I?” I ask the forlorn mirror,
Unfamilar. Having lived in the shadow
Of another
I’ve come not to know my face
Without my lover.
So am I canvas, blank?
Present waiting to be unwrapped?
Is there identity waiting to be tapped,
like landscape waiting to be mapped?
Or must I mold the mould
That I will break?

E is for Etheree. Number of syllables corresponds with the line. Line 1= 1 syllable..etc.

Stars;
Hundreds
Of stars, all
Bright, all falling.
I could fall myself,
Waiting for embrace or
Collision. Trust? Not again.
This time I’m shooting for distance.

A dirge is a poem of lamentation, and is generally written to be read at a funeral. No one I know has died recently, so I’m going to go ahead and get creative.

Cold as marble
Pale as ash
This is how I think of the past.
Of course, you were alive then,
I tell myself now.

You were warm once,
When I touched your breast
I believe I felt a heart in your chest–
A dull throbbing
No urgency,
All calm,
Just with me.

I have laid that thought to rest,
A palm’s worth of dirt, the past be blessed.

I felt the pull long ago,
Quiet and septic
The silence contagious
Skin went cold.
Glances glazed.
Touch, empty,
On flesh, hollow.
This is the way that death will catch me.

I have laid that thought to rest,
A palm’s worth of dirt, the past be blessed.

In all of my memories
You now stand–
Morbid porcelain
Glass eyes open.
I thought you were alive.
All of those kisses
Upon cold lips,
Now unseemly.
You’d laugh and say,
“Well, when I kiss the mirror
We always bump noses!”
So clever. Cold. Clever.
Would I’d forget…

I have laid that thought to rest,
A palm’s worth of dirt, the past be blessed.

A chained sonnet is a poem of no specific length in iambic pentameter. The “chain” comes from the rule that the last word in each line begins the next line.

“Who am I at the end of days?” I ask.
Ask me, and I’ll grin brightly and attack.
Attack, trace back, re-face, and double back,
Back into the cage you built for my heart.
“Heart you,” you’d laugh and say, afraid to love.
“Love me!” I’d plea, “I loved you from the start.”
Start over, and try not to cry this time.
Time shows love was the path that I did choose.
“Choose now, I will not always wait,” I lied.
Lied once more, like I always did for love.
Love, I said, was what you believed it was.
Was I, then, worth so little joy to you?
You, filled with mercy gave me pain. I cried,
Cried in front of you, and you watched, so calm.
Calm is not a phase of the tides which flow,
Flow then ebb, the part of you that I know.
Know me now? Of course not. You never did.