it came in the night
driving and thick
a vertical virtual
wall of precipi…
tation
–
wind rumples
through the eves
crunkling the cardboard
taped to my ceiling
“spielkiste”
from the last time
–
my spiders watch
from the opposite corner
of the room
their spindly legs
like stripped
upside down
umbrellas
–
dehumidifier hums
on 80%
carpets
still feel damp
–
the rains are here again
Photo by Anna Atkins on Unsplash
everything is shrinking
or is it just my thinking
something about drinking
haven’t got an inkling
maybe Skeltonic verse
is par for the course
guess we could do worse
don’t call the hearse
yet
that Hemingway cartoon
crashed like a lead balloon
did no one see
or do they all hate he?
but I got 320 followers
so could not be jollier
and
with two more days to go
in this NaPoWriMo
think I’ve done O (K)
and to finish will be yay!
Day 28’s NaPoWriMo prompt was to write a poem using Skeltonic verse. Don’t worry, there are no skeletons involved. Rather, Skeltonic verse gets its name from John Skelton, a fifteenth-century English poet who pioneered the use of short stanzas with irregular meter, but two strong stresses per line (otherwise know as “dipodic” or “two-footed” verse). The lines rhyme, but there’s not a rhyme scheme per se. The poet simply rhymes against one word until he or she gets bored and moves on to another. Here is a good explainer of the form, from which I have borrowed this excellent example:
Dipodic What?
Dipodic Verse
will be Terse.
Stress used just twice
to keep it nice,
short or long
a lilting song
or sounding gong
that won’t go wrong
if you adhere
to the rule here,
Now is that clear
My dear?
This year’s poetry month has felt like more of a challenge to get through than last year, with my other writing commitments bubbling away in the background, so I thought I’d just go for rather silly doggerel today.
Not actually sure if it’s skeltonic or not.
Think I usually write like that.
What-ever.
The image is a detail from one of Sir John Tenniel’s Alice in Wonderland illustrations I grabbed off the internet … I think those pics are royalty-free these days anyway. ?
The new one’s teeth are new
Only seven have come through
His little cheeks so red today
I think another’s on its way
The big one’s choppers have no caries
But soon he’ll lose them all to fairies
I’ll be sad to see them go
He’s growing up so fast, you know
My fangs have recently been cleaned
The nurse was brutal and it seemed
far too painful – I was sore
So now I brush better than before
Himself’s pearlies gleam — no worries
Despite the years and years of durries.
Since it’s passed by DNA
I hope the boys’ genes went his way
There’s something so lovely about mouths
And the chunks of calcium in ours
might not look like Hollywood
Yet the smiles are very good
I’m giving National/Global Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo / GloPoWriMo) a go – write one poem, per day throughout April. Today’s prompt/challenge was to do a family portrait in poetry. I wanted to write about teeth anyway so it seemed to fit nicely.
clairevetica 