A Dragon’s Tale
Lessons in Literature
Poetry challenge: Sonnet poem.
I have been Cyrano for far too long,
Hiding behind my nose and sing song words,
Roxanne, my dear, I have done you so wrong,
Because I have been loving you in thirds,
Not letting you see who I really am,
Concealing these feelings I feel for you,
My finger stuck in the dyke and damn,
The Debt Slave
Everything is Dandy for the Dandelion
Poetry challenge: Free verse.
During my residency in this abominable life
I have known the gruesome and the beautiful,
I have known the thrall of the flawless embrace…breathtaking
As I have known the sorrowful swell of heart cleaved from chest
I have known a precious few worthy and winsome people
And I am thankful for having known them
Because they have taught me the tangible lesson
That I contemplate in my solitude
Amid the myriad of superfluous and discombobulated thought
Scrumptious morsels of truth for the peckish mind grown plump on falsehood
I abandon the gospel of the pompous and the eminent
And the absurd squabble over what is right
What is proper about this world I have come to loath,
Rhyme Royal
Poetry challenge: Didatic poem.
Words wrapped into stanza in perfect coil
The scheme of all schemes lay at this apple’s core
a-b-a-b-b-c-c, poet’s foil
The sharpest blade in poet’s chest of war
Rusted because it isn’t used anymore
Now thought of as peculiar, odd and quite queer
Lost in text collecting dust year after year
In Memory of Debbie; TheGirlwiththePen
She was the Girl with the Pen
An Angel in the world of men
May she rest in the arms of the Lord
Amen
The Most Difficult Time Of The Year
Desperately Seeking Clarisse (Monorhyme)
Legacy of US (Monorhyme Sonnet)
Bright Lights (Tetractys)
Splash
Skyline
With neon
Steel and glass
Write on the night in electric crayon
When First I Heard The Song Of Turtledove (Chant Royal)
The years had passed by me, all forty-five
An empty life without a legacy
I felt more like the dead than I did alive
When I chanced upon an unseen beauty
God could not a more perfect being create
That neither sin, nor vice could desecrate
I encountered her by the riverside
In the glow of dusk nigh the eventide
Aquiline features with skin of olive
First time ever upon true beauty spied
When first I heard the song of turtledove
In Poor Taste (Limerick)
There once was a boy named Beiber
A reject of the elves of Keebler
Teach this imp some respect
And ring his scrawny neck
For calling Anne Frank a “Belieber”
Craft
Wine and Vinegar (An Analogy and An Allegory)
The truth is about wine and vinegar
Is in essence the two are similar
They can be made from the same piece of fruit
Or plucked from the same vine
And while they may share the same root
Vinegar will never be wine
Ominous Owl (Not Quite A Huitain)
When Tanka Meets Haiku It’s True Love
Poetry Challenge: Self Portrait.
The Wrong Crowd (Timber)
Spiritual (Timber)
Beat
In trying to find my own voice
I have howled like Ginsberg
Tried to wash away the dust of the road
With cheap wine like Kerouac
While listening to the bluesman wail
Like Burrows I dined on a naked lunch
Of stupefying drugs
As the cockroaches of Kafka
Scurried through my addled mind
Through a stream of distorted consciousness
Mount Pinnacle (Poetry Challenge: Landscape)
How do I even begin to explain the scenery?
The magnificent flora in splendor and greenery
The lady of the land lying seductively on her side
A silhouette on the horizon, heaving breast, hips wide
Head propped up upon crook’d arm and hand
She silently surveys the lay of the land…
Self Portrait
Plucked from the pages of Dostoyevsky
I really am quite the caricature
Cartoon buffoonery played out tragically
Edvard Munch could not paint a more accurate picture
A sketch of tormented soul draped in melancholic shroud
The nightmare that evolved from the dream
Random thoughts the Madman wonders aloud
In order to silence them I scream
At sunset I fight the dying lights
Beneath star bright under dark form of magic
Everything pales in the shadows of white nights
While the moon waxes and wanes nostalgic
The hours unwind and death draws nearer
This is the idiot I see when I look in the mirror…
The Sphinx
Acquired Tastes
In youth I was a Sweet child
As a teen I had a Salty mouth
Umami didn’t like my un-Savoury friends
As a young man I had Spicy sex
In midlife I began to Sour on things
In old age I have grown Bitter and cynical
By Heaven I Swear (Rondeau redoublé)
By heaven I swear by all that I hold dear
Bound by promise for as long as I breathe air
More than sweet nothings I whisper in your ear
This something we share is something very rare
There is nothing in this life that can prepare
For crystallization of feelings so clear
No matter what happens I will always care
By heaven I swear by all that I hold dear
Your heart I hold sacred, your love I revere
The Widow (Sestina)
Perennial bloom upon ancient tomb
Ivy climbs the walls of olden towers
When will the waltz put on pause resume?
Beautiful bouquet of spring time flowers
Reinvented new identity assume
A statue under the sun of noon time hours
Having spent well over ten thousand hours
With her heart enshrined in a sacred tomb
Locked away in imaginary towers
Life sputtered and stalled and would not resume
Arranging her hair with wild flowers
Her grief was too much for one person to assume
The Heart (Tyburn)
Burning
Yearning
Learning
Earning
The heart is that burning yearning pit
That will keep us learning earning it
Tyburn is a six line poem consisting of 2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 9 syllables. The first four lines rhyme and are all descriptive words. The last two lines rhyme and incorporate the first, second, third, and fourth lines as the 5th through 8th syllables.
Poet's Corner 