The second of my collections of poems written for "Express It In Eight." |
As usual these days, I choose blog format because it offers more space for the work. |
Format Soup Eight syllables per line is all lines one and two require of us but seven becomes the goal the next two to be just so. And then to six we fall enough to make us cuss five should fill this whole format MozeyMo. Oh no, I’ve missed my bus! Line count: 9 MozeyMo format For Express It In Eight, 08.31.24 Prompt: MozeyMo format: • 9 lines: 2 quatrains + 1 line • syllables per line: 8 8 7 7 / 6 6 5 5 / 6 • rhyme scheme: A B C D / A B C D / B Note: This was painful to write since the gradually descending syllable count prevents any success in creating metre. Syllable counting does not necessarily create metre but varied counts destroy it. And I’m all about metre. This is not a complaint but merely a groan of pain. |
Butterflies I call the eternally giddy, those obsessed with the blatantly silly, who gambol and play and prattle all day, they are butterfly-minded old biddies. They flutter from bloom to another, a sip here and then from the other, with chatter you just cannot smother. Line count: 8 Rhymed aabbc ddd For Express It In Eight, 08.28.24 Prompt: Butterfly Park. |
Plant Oh, deep in thy vegetable heart of matter What humus thoughts grow thou Tomorrow you feed on their rotting flesh Though they may pluck thee now Line count: 4 For Express It In Eight, 08.27.24 Prompt: Write an old-fashioned poem. Note: Taking the prompt more literally, I remembered that I did write (many years ago - circa 1970) a poem in old-fashioned English. It has only four lines so does not qualify for this forum, but I thought it might be interesting enough to mention. The flower pictured is a Monkey Face Orchid. |
Childhood I remember a world where the kids ran free and the sun shone daily in skies of blue, where time was forever and my task was to be careless of the past and the future too. But curled up in the bedclothes of every night, I dreamed of the days spent in flowering meadows, with never a thought that one day I might look back on all this as the long, long ago. Line count: 8 Rhymed abab For Express It In Eight, 08.27.24 Prompt: Write an old-fashioned poem. |
Interlude Pardon my beetle feet on your petals so pure and white so great is the day’s heat I needed to rest from my flight And your great smiling face aglow with light like the sun seemed a wonderful place for a passing moment of fun. Line count: 8 Rhymed abab For Express It In Eight, 08.25.24 Prompt: Photo of ladybird (ladybug) on a daisy. |
Excellence “Perfectionist” they’ll say when I fuss about getting things right; but they’re wrong in a way, as it’s only with some things I’m tight. For myself I don’t really care, I’m happy with “That’ll do.” But if it’s for the people out there it has to be good and true. Line count: 8 Rhymed abab For Express It In Eight, 08.24.24 Prompt: Strive for excellence. |
Bison Having posed for the stone age hunter the bison moves on to other fields other grasses where he can multiply and throng eventually to shake the earth with his numbers the thunderous herd in symbiosis with tribes of hunters doomed like it to pass in time to history and endless corn and wheat. Line count: 8 Free verse For Express It In Eight, 08.23.24 Prompt: Cave painting of bison and photo of the same. |
Tectonics Now the snows of eternal winter settle on my raised face in the sodden clouds and the brittle shells of my birth are but myriad memories of the silent deep lifted now through millennial torture locked in the grip of relentless earth folded and pressed in stony dance to mountain heights and alpine field. Line count: 8 Free verse For Express It In Eight, 08.21.24 Prompt: Write a shifting poem. |
Boat If I had a boat, it would be a simple thingie, a rowboat, small, what they used to call a dinghy. No need for nautical knowledge vast or navigational skills from a sailor’s past. But sufficient for a day spent tootling on a river, a trip across the bay, relaxation to deliver. The slow oars squeaking in their locks, the bright water shimmering green above the rocks. Line count: 8 Rhyming couplets For Express It In Eight, 08.20.24 Prompt: If I had a boat. |