Riddle Me This...

So first came the thought of fall and autumn colors dancing to the ground...this lead to another thought within which was hidden a poem.  I kept this poem tucked away, almost forgotten, until I came across a piece by another poet...a lovely haiku entitled Fall by Jeff (of My Tiny Throes).  After reading this, the poetic thoughts resurfaced forming the following:

Crying Trees

blush pink tears fall
scatter to the wind
celebrating new life
drops of joy

hushed amber tears fall
cascade to the ground
embracing life's end
drops of grief

In conjunction was birthed a riddle:

They cry twice a year, joyously at first with a spring in their limbs and then grievously with fallen hearts.  What are they?

And alas, came the melding of the two...

What Are They?

They cry twice a year
joyously at first with a spring in their limbs

blush pink tears fall
scatter to the wind
celebrating new life
drops of joy

and then grievously with fall hearts

hushed amber tears fall 
cascade to the ground
embracing life's end
drops of grief.

What are they?

Why the need to meld them?  No idea....  I guess I just thought it would be interesting....

Death of a Goldfish

Death of a Goldfish

orange sherbet floats
belly up in a
crystal sea
[three parts 7UP
four parts ginger ale]

waiting on the hand
giant in relation
to his own
[though his doesn't exist
so that's saying a lot]

meant to scoop him up
placing him deep within
earth's underbelly

swallowing him whole
turning him over
swim through non-existence

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Inspiration for this piece:  Over at dVerse Poets Pub, for this weeks MeetTheBar they're exploring "Verbal Cubism and Tender Buttons."  I thought "what the heck" and then I thought "what the heck."  (You'd know the difference if you could hear me say them in my head.)  Anyway, in an attempt to write something I came up with the above piece.  Just because the prompt gave birth to this, does not mean it fits the prompt...'cause the cubism thing confuses me and the poem above makes perfect sense.

On unearthing titles:  This piece originally was going to be called Goldfish...I know...very creative.  Then it was going to be called Goldfish and the Glass Box, because well boxes can be cubes.  But that went out the window when I changed the word swim (at the end of the first line) to floats.

The Wait ~ Blackout Poetry #1

The Wait

time shrugs
revealing boundaries;

only love
makes the waiting
thrilling.

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A note on form:  Blackout poetry...Erasure poetry...Redacted poetry...by whatever name you wish to call it....  The above construction is formed by taking an already existing piece of work (whether from a book or newspaper or any other written entity) and removing words until you are left with something that hopefully makes sense.

About this series:  My goal is to challenge myself to unearth some semblance of sense through the use of blackout/erasure poetry.  This piece is technically my second attempt at such a feat, but the start of this new plight and thus marked as Blackout Poetry #1.  I have, for the fun of it, included my first attempt below.

Attribution (above):   Blackout Poetry unearthed from a page in Erin Kelly’s novel, The Poison Tree.

Attribution (below):   Blackout Poetry unearthed from a page in Debbie Viguié’s novel, Violet Eyes.

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Dancing Down the Storm

A storm--
charged with intensity
of every terrible moment--
died,
when she danced.

A Tale of Love (and Woe) – Lovers' Song #10

Knight #10

Princess #10

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A note on form:  The above form has little (or sporadic) history.  Part of a long line of ancient Japanese forms from which come the sedōka, choka, and tanka is the katauta.  Depending on the source this poem (also known as a half-poem or half-song), is either 17 (5 / 7 / 5) or 19 (5 / 7 / 7) syllables long.  The feeling I get is that this form is meant to be one half of a conversation...perhaps two lovers conversing back and forth.  There is also note of this form consisting of a question-and-answer feel; the first poem posing the question, while the second poem answers it. 


About this series:  This series is a branch-off of a ten act ballad called A Tale of Love and Woe.  All odd numbered installations are initiated by the "princess" with a response from the "knight."  In each of these, the princess follows the 17 syllable pattern to which the knight replies in kind. All even numbered installations are initiated by the "knight" with a response from the "princess."  In each of these, the knight follows the 19 syllable pattern to which the princess replies in kind. 

Smack's Kiwi (N+7)

crinkles sing gently
beneath the moped's lushes glutton
waking drifts behind closed fables

carbohydrate horseflies serenade
beneath flashing nest likelihood
coaxing drifts to steal the nil

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Inspiration for this piece:   As previously mentioned, over at dVerse Poets Pub they are exploring the merger of math and poetry.  The particular form described is the most popular OULIPO (Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle); it is called N+7.  You take an already existing piece and replace all nouns with the noun seven places away in a dictionary of your choosing (mine was a Merriam-Webster's Pocket Dictionary).  Now, in my head this meant counting not every word and hoping the seventh was a noun (which may be what was supposed to be done), but rather finding the seventh noun that followed it (thus only counting a word if it was a noun).  You are also not to use a word that has the same root...this for me occurred twice and interestingly enough in the same relative spot.  The last word in each stanza.  This meant in the first stanza (which ended with eyes) I could not only not use eyesores, but had to skip past all the eye--- into the F's.  The second stanzas end of night would have been replaced with nightmare.

On selecting an original poem:  Short and sweet...

Slumber's Kiss

crickets sing gently
beneath the moon's lushes glow
waking dreams behind closed eyes

car horns serenade
beneath flashing neon lights
coaxing dreams to steal the night 

cr | azy

(I know, I usually put this ramblings at the end, but I thought it better to start with the things that brought this craziness into existence.)

Inspiration for this piece:  Over at dVerse Poets Pub, they are exploring the intersection (or Marriage) of math and poetry.  While the introduced form (which I must admit intrigues me) is not one I have ever come across, I have explored other convergences of math and poetry:  Fibs, which are based off of the Fibonacci sequence; Palindromes, of the word by word variety (I've seen the letter by letter variety and those people who wrote them...wow); and then technically there is any of the syllabic numerical pattern such as Etherees and Nonets.  The challenge was to employ the N+7, the most well known OULIPO (Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle) though the Palindrome falls under this group as well.  Or, for those left-side brained crazy people (crazy is my word), to create an form where math and poetry overlap.  If I haven't mentioned this lately, my left brain has been vying for some attention as of late...seems my right has been running the show.  And so, please forgive me the math you are about to encounter.

A bit of math:  I was too lazy to write my own explanation of the Stem-and-Leaf plot, so I grabbed this from the Usborne Illustrated Dictionary of Math.

A bit of figurative language:  I'm certain most poets are well familiar with alliteration.  "The occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words." (google search dictionary definition)  There definitely are some fun tongue twister examples of this..."Peter Piper picked a pack of picked peppers"..."Sally sold sea shells by the sea shore"...

The trick of bringing them together:  First...often with alliteration, there are additional words (such as of, the, by, etc.) that sit in the midst of the adjacent "same" letters.  In creating this mergence, these extras must go and not take away from the piece.  Second...in the case of the stem, this comes from the beginning consonants that are repeating.  (Yes, I am avoiding words that begin with vowels in this creation...I'm sure I could come up with a way to use vowels, but my brain is not ready for such thought.)  Finally, the leaf comes from the rest of the word, with spaces (as seen above) used between the word endings.  So, what does it look like and how do you read it?  Glad you asked....

cr | azy

hmmm....maybe I shouldn't tell you how it reads...it would probably be more fun if you have to figure it out...


An aside:  As for the N+7...give me and my pocket dictionary a few minutes or so...

Too Late

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A note on form:  This is  my third attempt at the form developed by Gay Reiser Cannon. She has dubbed it by two names, "Falling Diamonds" and "Quarrel."

"It is composed of a series of lines beginning with one line of one iambic foot, then two, three, four, five, four, three, two iambic feet and then again one iambic foot where the one foot lines must rhyme. Basically then the form is blank verse that is shaped in diamonds or triangles with one sustaining middle rhyme. You may choose to add either internal or end rhymes as well but the only requirement is for the one foot lines to rhyme. Hyphenating end words is prohibited. A minimum of two diamonds should be made." (Cannon, 2014)

In her most recent exploration of the form, she spoke of how adjusting the structure slightly would allow for this form to be utilized to tell two sides of a story or a conversation between two individuals.  This is my second attempt at varying the structure, yet this time I worked to better maintain the diamond form.  I also created the piece so that the middle (shared line) can actually be used to end the first diamond and/or start the second diamond.

About the structure:  While I was able to get the desired effect to appear for me, the device used to view or even the screen resolution some choose to use could throw off the visual.  And so, in order to counteract this I decided to create it as an image instead.