poems

Cascade Serenade

The Cascade form is a modern style that repeats each line of the first tercet or quatrain in subsequent stanzas. It offers a sort of reflective, cyclical veil over the text like most forms with repeating lines (hence, cascading). It doesn’t require any rhyme or meter, but I still like to incorporate rhyme to make it a bit more challenging. I decided to go with four tercets, but you could also try with five quatrains. My tercet version follows ABC | abA | cdB | efC.

I wanted to hum you a sweet serenade.
I sensed you needed calmness that moment.
Maybe you can meet me in the song.

It’s so like you to put up a barricade,
but I can’t offer something more potent –
I wanted to hum you a sweet serenade.

Your agitation may not last too long,
but I need to end it, and end it now.
I sensed you needed calmness that moment.

For all the moments we get together,
let’s spend them in beauty, peace, and love.
Maybe you can meet me in the song…

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Preface Blackout Poem from Charlotte Bronte's Wuthering Heights

#6 of 86: Blackout with Bronte

Blackout Poetry, or Erasure Poetry, involves taking a segment of complete work and removing a limited amount of words to create a new poem. A Blackout basically takes a Sharpie to a printed work, leaving behind a series of words or characters to make something new. I tried this with a preface page from Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. I copied an image and added black rectangles in Paint to reverse highlight the words I wanted–it was a surprisingly creative experience! I can see these being really meaningful if the new edit somehow references the meaning of the original text.

The final text reads “Preface: time laughs at Fate | your World was found | human and beautiful it grows”

Mirror Mountain

Nine to One

Nine to One

I always thought I would change the world
with a Great Novel for my time.
So sure I was meant to be
a Great entrepreneur,
or a Great artist,
Great anything.
But instead,
I’m here.
Small.
Human.
And I live,
and I have love,
and I feel passion,
and I have confidence,
and I let my mind run free,
and I do not dwell on regrets,
and I savor moments of Greatness.

For 2016, A Villanelle

I like writing poetry because it’s like condensing the feelings that are slowly expressed in fiction down to a few raw lines. I like writing in forms because it’s like a creative puzzle. The villanelle is tricky, because by the fourth stanza or so I feel like I’m really reaching for those rhymes, but it’s still fun. This form repeats the same two lines with only one other rhyming sound (A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2). Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas, or Mad Girl’s Love Song by Sylvia Plath are exemplary of how powerful the form can be.

2016

Last year’s “new leaf” was a broken promise
folded by April, might have been May.
Here I am, the same five sweaters in my closet.

From then to now, twelve bucks in my pocket.
Yesterday’s commitments abandoned today,
and I was so confident I’d keep my promise.

Wasting my life away in an office,
My peers are fulfilled while I wait for Friday,
wearing the same shitty sweaters in my closet.

Cynical, yes, but it’s at least honest:
The scale hasn’t budged, a full ashtray…
enough evidence to refute my annual promise.

I fantasize what could be—solid, flawless—
But it’s a dream. Temporary. And I’ll wake
with scuffed shoes and pilled sweaters in my closet.

“New Year, New YOU” is an advertisement. Word vomit.
Self-reflection, decisiveness—that’s the language of change.
To 2016, I make no guarantee and offer no promise
Except to buy a new sweater for my closet.

Explore the villanelle and other forms, or just read some good poetry.

The Best I Can

A Rondeau…

My mom said “do the best you can”
back when I was nine or ten.
It recently occurred to me
that my “best” is an anomaly,
something to strive for now and then.

Who works magic time and again?
Can’t I say I don’t give a damn
without flinching or feeling guilty?
I mostly do the best I can…

I work hard and I love my man,
I hold doors and I follow the plan.
I read books and I earned my degree,
I tell jokes and I’m drug free.
I eat fries and I drive a sedan.
I am doing the best I can.

***No, that is not me in the photo. That is a cool French girl photographed by Christopher Hue.

“One Slip” by Pink Floyd

A restless eye across a weary room
A glazed look and I was on the road to ruin
The music played and played as we whirled without end
No hint, no word her honour to defend
I will, I will she sighed to my request
And then she tossed her mane while my resolve was put to the test
Then drowned in desire, our souls on fire
I lead the way to the funeral pyre
And without a thought of the consequence
I gave in to my decadence
One slip, and down the hole we fall
It seems to take no time at all
A momentary lapse of reason
That binds a life for life
A small regret, you won’t forget,
There’ll be no sleep in here tonight
Was it love, or was it the idea of being in love?
Or was it the hand of fate, that seemed to fit just like a glove?
The moment slipped by and soon the seeds were sown
The year grew late and neither one wanted to remain alone
One slip, and down the hole we fall
It seems to take no time at all
A momentary lapse of reason
That binds a life for life
A small regret, you won’t forget,
There’ll be no sleep in here tonight
One slip … one slip

(Listen to One Slip )

Written by David Gilmour & Phil Manzanera
for A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987)

Having a Moment with Sylvia Plath

I’m working on a feminine drama with portions set in the mid 1960’s and decided to do some supplemental reading, which brought me to The Bell Jar and works of poetry by Sylvia Plath. I remember Mad Girl’s Love Song being the first example of modern formal poetry that was both accessible and captivating for me. The more I read, though, the more fascinated I become with the author. This latest read caught my eye, because the title was borrowed for an episode of “Mad Men” (which I am also having a moment with).

Lady Lazarus
by Sylvia Plath

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it——

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?——

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day. (more…)

Sonnet for Someday

Sonnet for Someday

Someday, my sore foot won’t even matter.
Someday, I’ll take an inventory on
my life and barely recall this chapter.
Am I unhappy? No… But the day’s gone
so fast, and I can’t remember what I
ate for breakfast let alone what memor-
able thing happened. People tell me “try
to live in the moment!” I can’t afford
that, though. I can’t play Ferris Bueller and
seize the day. Who will pay my rent, or do
my homework, or write lame sonnets? I can’t
take a break without my plan falling through.

Eventually, The Grind will abate,
Just like today is yesterday’s Someday.

For You

Just for you
not anyone else
    because I sat at work alone
    and laughed
    when I remembered your Papa John impression.
Just for you
    because I can’t go all day
    without thinking
    about what you’re thinking
    or what you’ll eat for dinner.
Not anyone else
    because I never
    want to kiss anyone
    the way I kiss you.
Just for you
    because you gave me
    my favorite place to be:
    tucked under your arm
    with my head on your chest.
Not anyone else
    because you’re the only one
    who can make the switch
    and be safe
    and, go ahead, laugh. It’s funny.
Just for you
    because I’ll never love anyone else
    as much as I love you.

A Woman Is Never Just One

Somewhere in between a hero and a
villain, between life and death, is woman.
She is praying in China and she is
studying law in Montreal. Never
once has she been singular. Never just
a woman, but a collection of one.

Between honey and vinegar, someone
in 1591 experienced a
side of one woman. Just one side of just
one woman. One facet of one lady.
She’s always on because she is never
off. Her identity throughout time is

evolving yet constant. From birth she is
innocent, each moment she grows by one.
One moment in one mosaic you’ll never
see because it burned to ashes in a
forest fire. Each child has had a mother
who surrendered part of her body just

to keep life going, whether it was just-
ified or not; and every mother is
an intricate machine called a female.
Every cell must sing with another one
to nurture a heartbeat to become a
fresh person. And she can cry when ever

she must without judgment, but she never
cries for the wrong reason. And tears are just
a tiny salty waterway down a
cheek in a grayscale photograph that is
aging in a damp basement of someone
you know. Somewhere in between a school girl

and a matron is one side of one her,
one face of one diamond that will never
be extracted from one chip of one stone
buried five hundred feet deep. Each side just
a glimpse of the whole, just as each whole is
a glimpse of what is woman. She is a

book that misses its title, because just
one title never captures all she is,
someone in between zeta and alpha.

As published in Arches – Fall 2014, the Mount Mary University student periodical

Cry, My Love

Please sit here with me now and try, my love,
to see what I see. Use my eyes, my love.

I see a girl looking down at her shoes.
What do you think that implies, my love?

I see a man light a smoke, drinking booze.
Is he a bad boy or bad guy, my love?

He asks if she wants to go for a cruise –
They drove around then got high, my love.

Before long they both had matching tattoos:
his name was scribed on her thigh, my love!

First permanent ink, but then a fresh bruise.
While all she could do was stand by, my love,

he took off all night and she took abuse.
Why would he hit and run? Why, my love?

To her parents, she made an excuse.
She crossed her fingers to lie, my love.

Depression really, she called it “the blues.”
Far beyond a frown and a sigh, my love.

She drew the line the day he accused:
“You’re cheating on me on the sly, my love!”

She fired back – “This can’t be what I choose!”
She packed a bag and said “Good bye, my love!”

I’m the girl, here’s my bag, I’m cutting loose.
Now you can be the one to cry, my love.

Autobiography, by P.

I was born on July 17th 2014 at 132 pm
  and I will be dead a year from now
  or so my pessimism tells me.
I have a small chance to really live
  but I’ll probably be less like the bible
  and more like a have you found jesus flyer.
I will meet fewer than twenty people
  but I will speak to less than half
  and will affect less than a quarter.
Nobody told me what I was supposed to be.
I have to figure that out myself
  but I think my existence is pointless
  so I don’t spend a lot of time on it.
If I had to guess I would say that I make people think
  about what happens to their words
  after they’ve been released
  but I have no way of knowing that.

Tennos Evol

Tennos Evol

Much harder to climb out than to fall in.
Fight through the doubt: when I lose you, I win.

You fell into my world and we painted
the quiet blue a vivid red. I had
hardly noticed I was red, too. You stained
like ink in a washing machine, red
tint soaks in, and saturates what’s inside.
But I loved being red. So much better
than blue. Then I convinced myself to hide
my secrets from view. I thought, “forget her
and her silly ambitions, this is love.”
But then I caught it in the mirror, because
your red love didn’t hide the truth in front of
me. The truth that I missed the blue I was.