Shut Your Eyes

Left hand slips

his eyes covered

right hand placed

square on his back



He's away ushered,

hearts dark grow;

she away looked

from a morning's attack



See, baby please

the bird's flying

no baby's dying:

Daddy'll soon be back.



Softly you'll coo,

new morn'll deliver

and you'll do

as is typical pact:



first food prepare,

the flock shepherd,

eat food peppered...

Her limbs went slack:



Her son's hand she took

to send away his fear,

By this, baby, I mean not to scare,

But tomorrow you'll, I'm afraid, stay all day

with needed food at hand,

in this hole so black.



A bomb did fall

and killed them all

but her husband, he was on the ball.



He took the rifle

and did not trifle:

no more bombs; they will never come back.

Poet's note:I like to call this Rigid Bedlam:
1)Start with 5 four lined stanzas. For these 5 stanzas the first three lines contain three words. The middle word in the first line of each stanza is repeated in the the middle of the third. The last line in each of these 5 stanzas contains four words, and the fourth word in each of the end lines rhymes.

2) A rhyme sceme in these first 5 stanzas must appear in two of the first three lines. If the first stanzas rhymes the first and third lines, then so must the third and fifth stanzas, leaving the second and fourth stanzas to have parallel rhyming as well. It does not matter on which lines this rhyme falls, just that whatever pattern is chosen is repeated in every other stanza.

3) The next stanza, or the sixth stanza, has six lines. The first, second, fifth, and sixth lines all have five words, leaving the third and fourth lines with 8 words. All lines include as their third word the words that were repeated in the previous five stanzas, in the order that they appeared in those stanzas. The sixth line's end rhyme matches all the other's end rhymes.

4) The final two stanzas are largely free form, breaking away from the organized chaos above it. However, they must have exact stucture except their end rhymes, because only the final stanza will use a different end rhyme than the lines before it: it will use the recurring end rhyme.


Confusing i know but i dare people to try it out for themselves and see if they can create something under such controled freedom, because even though the parameters for form i have established require much forethought, the poet still has a feeling of freeness because of the shifting forms.

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