You wax
I wane
your ecstasy
is my pain
my loss
is your gain
and your ease
becomes my strain
My silence
your phrase
you curse
while I praise
Your clarity
is my haze
your map
my maze
and my ashes
ignite your blaze
The prompt for today is to write a quadrille, 44 words exactly, including the word blaze at dVerse Poets’ Pub: https://dversepoets.com/2024/04/29/quadrille-200/
Just a little spring fun, as I feel I’ve been taking myself too seriously for awhile now:
Once we were fresh
and tender, young stems
filled with eagerness and
chlorophyll
stretching, reaching
toward the sky
filled with passion,
carpels quivering, stamens straining
seed pods full to bursting.
But now petals drop,
leaves droop,
stems bend and bow.
Cell walls are no longer turgid.
We wait passively
for the Winds of Chance
to blow us down
or the Rabbit of Fortune
or the Crow of Despair
to bite us off at the ground
to steal our seeds
Our green days
are all behind us.
Now we simply wait for the Keeper of the Compost Pile
This is my reply to the writing prompt, “green” from dVerse Poets’ Pub.
Does your heart
break open
on a regular
basis?
Do you ever
find yourself
weeping
in the back
aisle
of a bookshop?
Do you ever
see
a person
on the street
and have
to look away
because you are
overcome
with
sadness?
Me too
Skies gather, darken
rain falls straight and true.
Its sound
hitting the roof
is a comfort,
my lullaby.
There are dramatic storms
with lightning and thunder,
or showy, flashing sun
but the rain,
the tranquil rain,
sings me to sleep
with its gentle song.
Lillian at dVerse Poets Poets asked us include the word tranquility, or a form of the word, in a quadrille, which is a poem of exactly 44 words, not including the title.
The hills call siren-like and steep.
Two children share a wooden sled,
new snow is beckoning and deep,
the hills call siren-like and steep.
They landed in a shattered heap,
too fast to suffer, it was said.
The hills called siren-like and steep.
Two children shared a wooden sled.
Well, this started out to be a quadrille (44 words) including the word “steep” to link to dVerse Poets’ Pub, but somehow it turned into a dark triolet. Theat’s an eight line, iambic tetrameter poem with the rhyme scheme: ABaAabAB, where capital letters indicate repeated lines. I haven’t written one of these in ages.
Today is unseasonably warm
The shed wall is thick with Asian beetles
We’ve had once-in-a-century floods
the past three years.
Running through my brain,
insistent as an unfed cat,
is the thought
this isn’t right
Is it too early to panic
or too late?
This is in response to dVerse Poets, whose writing prompt is a quadrille (44 words) including the word ‘early’.
I love you
but
you have
fallen
in with
the wrong crowd
They don’t care
about you
or your children
Hucksters
in shiny suits
lie and call it truth
With fast talk and small words
They steal your treasures
your reputation
your dignity
Orange is the new
black and blue
I weep for you
America
This is written for Verse Escape and for dVerse.
-Image by Carter Goodrich from the cover of the New Yorker, October 30, 2017
follow
the yellow-haired clown
through
the house of mirrors
see yourself
and the world
distorted
beyond recognition
then ride
the roller coaster
into the dark
try to
knock down
the impossible, weighted
bottles
the insufficient
ball
falls to the ground
with a dead-cat bounce
This is a Quadrille (44 words) containing the word “bounce” written for De at dVerse.
Signing up with the Sargent
audition unrehearsed
first chair potential
the score, peppered with notes
unwarranted, unanswered, unsent
and I, virtuoso in
a minor key
play
plucking my heart
con dolore
transmuting
pain to melody
oxidation to harmony
and regret to
solo
This is for dVerse where we were asked to write a Quadrille (44 words, including title) including some form of the word, “pepper” in honor of the anniversary of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
It’s grey today, and drizzling
inside my head
clouds gather behind my eyes
Outside the sun is burning
stars are turning
and the world hurtles
on
Looking out the window
I see only the fog
of my breath,
condensed
Then, without warning,
I storm
This is a Quadrille, or a poem of exactly 44 words for dVerse Poets’ Pub. And Mish has asked us to include some form of the word, “drizzle.”
In Other Words 