Jeff’s Tour de Force
by cricketjeff on March 5, 2009. © Jeff Green, All rights reserved
The lover’s way
(A Villanelle – fresh write in iambic pentameter)
The Moon has always lit a lover’s way
Her silver beams outshining Cupid’s darts
And only she can teach you what to say
When night arrives the stars begin to play
And lovers need a light to show their arts
The Moon has always lit a lover’s way
A tongue may be too tightly tied by day
The Moon lights words that serve to bind two hearts
And only she can teach you what to say
Without her aid the passions often stay
Too tightly wrapped to tease intended parts
The Moon has always lit a lover’s way
If you are lost in love and disarray
Her gentle light will show you how it starts
And only she can teach you what to say
I do not know a price you should not pay
To keep love’s journey firmly on the charts
The Moon has always lit a lover’s way
And only she can teach you what to say
I sent my love a Valentine
(A pre-written Pantoum – in iambic tetrameter)
I sent my love a Valentine
A kiss beneath her pretty nose
She promised me that she’d be mine
And every day the loving grows
A kiss beneath her pretty nose
As she was smiling up at me
And every day the loving grows
As everyone can plainly see
As she was smiling up at me
I fell beneath this witch’s spell
As everyone can plainly see
She fell beneath my spell as well
I fell beneath this witch’s spell
Bewitched bemused and free at last
She fell beneath my spell as well
She washed away her tragic past
Bewitched bemused and free at last
She wanted me to take command
She washed away her tragic past
So I obeyed her one demand
She wanted me to take command
She promised me that she’d be mine
So I obeyed her one demand
I sent my love a Valentine
The stick in the mud
(A pre-written IP Petrachan, if you will forgive ending it in a couplet, AP’s
finest Petrachan writer Eusebius does this and I love it)
In long and lazy meter I repose
Contented in the comfort of the rhyme
Perhaps I’ll find modernity in time
Before my aging bones can decompose
I have no greater wisdom to dispose
I cannot push my thoughts beyond sublime
So I must strive to make my verses chime
With all the dreams a lover may propose
Although iambs can seem a rigid cage
Confining and conventional in tone
They are a form with which I can engage
And maybe even make them seem my own
The Petrach never rhymed his final pair
Perhaps I’m not incorrigibly square
A Kenning Kyrielle sonnet
(A pre-written Kyrielle sonnet in IT, playing with Kenning an ancient devicein
poetry where you invent compounds for simple objects, I don’t consider a KS to
be a true sonnet with only 8 syllable lines)
Beneath the nightshine’s silent glow
I walk beside the waterstreet
I revel in the truths I know
You make my happiness complete
Above where silverflashes play
The mousebirds dart for night borne meat
When you are in my dreams by day
You make my happiness complete
Above me starts the treehair’s song
The cowfood rustles ‘neath my feet
My heartwish makes me sing along
You make my happiness complete
Beneath the nightshine’s silent glow
You make my happiness complete
Author notes
4 forms selected from a list, I was going to include an Ottava too but I
couldn’t find it.
English